/lit/ - Literature

One hundred quotations; fifty couples who failed, for one reason or another, to live happily ever after. Your task: identify the works and put the couples back together again.

The authors:

Peter Abelard, Poul Anderson, Giovanni Boccaccio, Robert Bolt, John Braine, Charlotte Bronte, Emily Bronte, John le Carré, Geoffrey Chaucer, James Clavell, Noel Coward, Lawrence Durrell, Euripides, William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ian Fleming, John Ford, Friedrich de la Motte Fouquée, William Golding, Graham Greene, H. Rider Haggard, Dashiell Hammett, Thomas Hardy, Héloise du Paraclet, Ernest Hemingway, Frank Herbert, Anthony Hope, Ted Hughes, Henrik Ibsen, Yasunari Kawabata, Henry James, John Keats, D. H. Lawrence, Hilary Mantel, Christopher Marlowe, Cormac McCarthy, Margaret Mitchell, Iris Murdoch, Michael Ondaatje, George Orwell, Ovid, Boris Pasternak, Sylvia Plath, Alexander Pushkin, Rainer Maria Rilke, J. D. Salinger, William Shakespeare, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Dylan Thomas, Leo Tolstoy, Virgil, Richard Wagner, Edith Wharton, T. H. White, John Williams, P. G. Wodehouse

In 34 cases, the two paired quotations are from the same work.
In 7 cases, from two different works by the same author.
In 9 cases, from works by different authors.

Two pairs of authors are writing about themselves. No author appears more than twice.


Hints on request.

1)
— Please could you give me a glass of water — I've got something in my eye and I want to bathe it.
— Would you like me to have a look?
— Please don't trouble. I think the water will do it.


2)
Small, podgy and at best middle-aged, he was by appearance one of London's meek who do not inherit the earth. His legs were short, his gait anything but agile, his dress costly, ill-fitting and extremely wet. His overcoat, which had a hint of widowhood about it, was of that black, loose weave which is designed to retain moisture.


3)
I never knew my father and I think my mother never knew him either. I cannot be sure, of course, but I incline to believe she never knew him — not socially at any rate unless we restrict the word out of all useful meaning. Half my immediate ancestry is so inscrutable that I seldom find it worth bothering about. I exist. These tobacco-stained fingers poised over the typewriter, this weight in the chair assures me that two people met; and one of them was Ma. What would the other think of me, I wonder? What celebration do I commemorate? In 1917 there were victories and defeats, there was a revolution. In face of all that, what is one little bastard more or less?


4)
O, she doth teach the torches to burn bright!
It seems she hangs upon the cheek of night
As a rich jewel in an Ethiop’s ear;
Beauty too rich for use, for earth too dear!


5)
General G. carefully went over the face with his magnifying glass.

It was a dark, clean-cut face, with a three-inch scar showing whitely down the sun-burned skin of the right cheek. The eyes were wide and level under straight, rather long black brows. The hair was black, parted on the left, and carelessly brushed so that a thick black comma fell down over the right eyebrow. The longish straight nose ran down to a short upper lip below which was a wide and finely drawn but cruel mouth. The line of the jaw was straight and firm. A section of dark suit, white shirt and black knitted tie completed the picture.

General G. held the photograph out at arm's length. Decision, authority, ruthlessness — these qualities he could see. He didn't care what else went on inside the man.

6)
How old were you when you first smoked a cigarette?

Three.

That's not true.

No. But not that much older. I stole a cigarette from my uncle's packet on the coffeetable and took a match from the kitchen and went out to the smokehouse and lit up. I was probably six.

Did you get sick?

What I remember was my head swimming. Still, I thought that if grown-ups did this there must be a reason for it.

I'm guessing that was a view with a limited shelflife.


7)
He knew whose gentle hand was at the latch,
Before the door had given her to his eyes;
And from her chamber-window he would catch
Her beauty farther than the falcon spies;
And constant as her vespers would he watch,
Because her face was turn’d to the same skies;
And with sick longing all the night outwear,
To hear her morning-step upon the stair.


8)
I don't want to wrong anybody, so I won't go so far as to say that she actually wrote poetry, but her conversation, to my mind, was of a nature calculated to excite the liveliest suspicions. Well, I mean to say, when a girl suddenly asks you out of a blue sky if you don't sometimes feel that the stars are God's daisy-chain, you begin to think a bit.


9)
Of all those things on earth that bleed and grow,
A plant most bruised is woman.


10)
Her eyes, that he had thought to be a dark brown or black, were a deep violet. Sometimes they caught the dim light of a lamp in the room and glittered moistly; he could turn his head one way and another, and the eyes beneath his gaze would change color as he moved, so that it seemed, even in repose, they were never still. Her flesh, that had at a distance seemed so cool and pale, had beneath it a warm ruddy undertone like light flowing beneath a milky translucence. And like the translucent flesh, the calm and poise and reserve which he had thought were herself, masked a warmth and playfulness and humor whose intensity was made possible by the appearance that disguised them.

11)
look here
he took the bark from the rail and dropped it into the water it bobbed up the current took it floated away his hand lay on the rail holding the pistol loosely we waited
you cant hit it now
no
it floated on it was quite still in the woods I heard the bird again and the water afterward the pistol came up he didnt aim at all the bark disappeared then pieces of it floated up he hit two more of them pieces of bark no bigger than silver dollars
thats enough I guess
he swung the cylinder out and blew into the barrel a thin wisp of smoke dissolved he reloaded the three chambers shut the cylinder he handed it to me butt first
what for i wont try to beat that
youll need it from what you said Im giving you this one because youve seen what itll do


12)
My tears, which I could not restrain, have blotted half your letter: I wish they had effaced the whole and that I had returned it to you in that condition. I should then have been satisfied with the little time I kept it, but it was demanded of me too soon.


13)
I imagine this midnight moment's forest:
Something else is alive
Beside the clock's loneliness
And this blank page where my fingers move.


14)
She was tall and pliantly slender, without angularity anywhere. Her body was erect and high-breasted, her legs long, her hands and feet narrow. She wore two shades of blue that had been selected because of her eyes. The hair curling from under her blue hat was darkly red, her full lips more brightly red. White teeth glistened in the crescent her timid smile made.


15)
If chains of sleep are to bind me fast,
the feeblest man's easy prize:—
one favour must you grant,
which I beg in solemn fear!
Let my sleep be protected by great terrors,
such that only the most valiant hero
may some day discover me here on the rock!

16)
She was a healthy well-grown child, without a trace of her mother’s beauty. She was not ugly; she had simply a plain, dull, gentle countenance. The most that had ever been said for her was that she had a “nice” face, and, though she was an heiress, no one had ever thought of regarding her as a belle. Her father’s opinion of her moral purity was abundantly justified; she was excellently, imperturbably good; affectionate, docile, obedient, and much addicted to speaking the truth. In her younger years she was a good deal of a romp, and, though it is an awkward confession to make about one’s heroine, I must add that she was something of a glutton. She never, that I know of, stole raisins out of the pantry; but she devoted her pocket-money to the purchase of cream-cakes. As regards this, however, a critical attitude would be inconsistent with a candid reference to the early annals of any biographer.


17)
— How did you like our music? That air they played, it had a certain — well, tell me what you thought of it.
— Could it have been Your Grace's own?
— Discovered! Now I'll never know your true opinion. And that's irksome, Thomas, for we artists, though we love praise, yet we love truth better.


18)
She sobre was, eek simple, and wys with-al,
The beste y-norisshed eek that mighte be,
And goodly of hir speche in general,
Charitable, estatliche, lusty, and free;
Ne never-mo ne lakkede hir pitee;
Tendre-herted, slydinge of corage;
But trewely, I can not telle hir age.


19)
As for me I am neither happy nor unhappy; I lie suspended like a hair or a feather in the cloudy mixtures of memory. I spoke of the uselessness of art but added nothing truthful about its consolations. The solace of such work as I do with brain and heart lies in this — that only there, in the silences of the painter or the writer can reality be reordered, reworked and made to show its significant side. Our common actions in reality are simply the sackcloth covering which hides the cloth-of-gold — the meaning of the pattern. For us artists there waits the joyous compromise through art with all that wounded or defeated us in daily life...


20)
“There’s no hope for their future. He hides it well, but she...! Her adoration shouts from her face. Look at her! Like a young girl! Oh, how foolish she is!”

21)
“Mon cousin,” began Madame, “I want your opinion. We know your skill in physiognomy; use it now. Read that countenance.”
The little man fixed on me his spectacles: A resolute compression of the lips, and gathering of the brow, seemed to say that he meant to see through me, and that a veil would be no veil for him.
“I read it,” he pronounced.
“Et qu’en dites vous?”
“Mais — bien des choses,” was the oracular answer.


22)
Careful now, she swabs the front glassy. Every step's like a bar of soap. Mind your size twelveses. That old Bessie would beeswax the lawn to make the birds slip.


23)
Oh, it wasn't fair that she should have to sit here primly and be the acme of widowed dignity and propriety when she was only seventeen. It wasn't fair that she must keep her voice low and her eyes cast modestly down, when men, attractive ones, too, came to their booth.

Every girl in Atlanta was three deep in men. Even the plainest girls were carrying on like belles — and, oh, worst of all, they were carrying on in such lovely, lovely dresses!


24)
Lost, I am lost: my fates have doomed my death:
The more I strive, I love; the more I love,
The less I hope: I see my ruin certain.
What judgement or endeavors could apply
To my incurable and restless wounds,
I thoroughly have examined, but in vain:
O that it were not in religion sin,
To make our love a God, and worship it.


25)
Certainly she had ways with her such as I never saw a child take up before; and she put all of us past our patience fifty times and oftener in a day: from the hour she came downstairs till the hour she went to bed, we had not a minute’s security that she wouldn’t be in mischief. Her spirits were always at high-water mark, her tongue always going — singing, laughing, and plaguing everybody who would not do the same. A wild, wicked slip she was — but she had the bonniest eye, the sweetest smile, and lightest foot in the parish: and, after all, I believe she meant no harm; for when once she made you cry in good earnest, it seldom happened that she would not keep you company, and oblige you to be quiet that you might comfort her.

26)
'Have you done nursing long?'
'Since the end of 'fifteen. I started when he did. I remember having a silly idea he might come to the hospital where I was. With a sabre cut, I suppose, and a bandage round his head. Or shot through the shoulder. Something picturesque.'
'This is the picturesque front,' I said.
'Yes,' she said. 'People can't realize what France is like. If they did it couldn't all go on. He didn't have a sabre cut. They blew him all to bits.'


27)
What languor would his silence show,
How full of fire his speech would glow!
How artless was the note which spoke
Of love again, and yet again;
How deftly could he transport feign!
How bright and tender was his look,
Modest yet daring! And a tear
Would at the proper time appear.


28)
'Merry were our lives and free, for the sorrows of mortals came not near to us. We had no soul, the gift God gives to every mortal, and without a soul no pain could enter into our lives.

Yet my father, the King of the Ocean, longed that I, his only daughter, should gain the great gift which is given to every mortal. And this he wished, though well he knew that to mortals was given, with the gift of a soul, the power to suffer.'


29)
Only too often, sadly, a good poet turns into a damned poor keeper of his body, but I believe he is usually issued a highly serviceable one to start out with. My brother was the most nearly tireless person I've known.


30)
In a very little while (for, as I expected, I got my fellowship) the boy became the favourite of the whole College — where, all orders and regulations to the contrary notwithstanding, he was continually in and out — a sort of chartered libertine, in whose favour all rules were relaxed. The offerings made at his shrine were simply without number, and I had serious difference of opinion with one old resident Fellow, now long dead, who was usually supposed to be the crustiest man in the University, and to abhor the sight of a child. And yet I discovered, when a frequently recurring fit of sickness had forced Job to keep a strict look-out, that this unprincipled old man was in the habit of enticing the boy to his rooms and there feeding him upon unlimited quantities of brandy-balls, and making him promise to say nothing about it. Job told him that he ought to be ashamed of himself, “at his age, too, when he might have been a grandfather if he had done what was right,” by which Job understood had got married, and thence arose the row.

31)
“You were as noisy as shai-hulud in a rage,” she said. “And you took the most difficult way up here. Follow me; I’ll show you an easier way down.” He scrambled out of the cleft, followed the swirling of her robe across a tumbled landscape. She moved like a gazelle, dancing over the rocks.


32)
This woman who was loved so much, that from one lyre
more mourning came than from women in mourning;
that a whole world was made from mourning, where
everything was present once again: forest and valley
and road and village, field, river and animal;
and that around this mourning-world, just as
around the other earth, a sun
and a silent star-filled sky wheeled,
a mourning-sky with displaced constellations:—
this woman who was loved so much . . .

But she walked alone, holding the god's hand,
her footsteps hindered by her long graveclothes,
faltering, gentle, and without impatience.


33)
There is something so indescribably sweet and satisfying, to a man, in the knowledge that he has forgiven his wife — forgiven her freely, and with all his heart. It seems as that had made her, as it were, doubly his own; he has given her a new life, so to speak; and she has in a way become both wife and child to him. So you shall be for me after this, my little scared, helpless darling.


34)
People or stars
Regard me sadly, I disappoint them.


35)
“Stand up close to the wall, out of the line of fire from the door,” I whispered.

“What are you going to do?” she asked in fright.

“You’ll see,” said I.

I took up the little iron table. It was not very heavy for a man of my strength, and I held it by the legs. The top, protruding in front of me, made a complete screen for my head and body. I fastened my closed lantern to my belt and put my revolver in a handy pocket. Suddenly I saw the door move ever so slightly — perhaps it was the wind, perhaps it was a hand trying it outside.

36)
Food is a profound subject and one, incidentally, about which no writer lies. I wonder whence I derived my felicitous gastronomic intelligence? A thrifty childhood gave me a horror of wasted food. I thoroughly enjoyed the modest fare we had at home. My mother was a ‘good plain cook’, but she lacked the inspired simplicity which is for me the essence of good eating. I think my illumination came, like that of Saint Augustine, from a disgust with excesses. When I was a young director I was idiotic and conventional enough to think that I had to entertain people at well-known restaurants. It gradually became clear to me that guzzling large quantities of expensive, pretentious, often mediocre food in public places was not only immoral, unhealthy and unaesthetic, but also unpleasurable. Later my guests were offered simple joys chez moi. What is more delicious than fresh hot buttered toast, with or without the addition of bloater paste? Or plain boiled onions with a little cold corned beef if desired? And well-made porridge with brown sugar and cream is a dish fit for a king. Even then some people, so sadly corrupt was their taste, took my intelligent hedonism for an affected eccentricity, a mere gimmick. (Wind in the Willows food a journalist called it.) And some were actually offended.


37)
Nothing could be more comfortable than writing about the ballet from books. A ballet he had never seen was an art in another world.


38)
My household gods, companions of my woes,
With pious care I rescued from our foes.
To fruitful Italy my course was bent;
And from the King of Heav’n is my descent.
With twice ten sail I cross’d the Phrygian sea;
Fate and my mother goddess led my way.
Scarce sev’n, the thin remainders of my fleet,
From storms preserv’d, within your harbour meet.
Myself distress’d, an exile, and unknown,
Debarr’d from Europe, and from Asia thrown,
In Libyan deserts wander thus alone.


39)
She had consumed all her reading and asked me for books. I had nothing but maps with me. ‘That book you look at in the evenings?’
‘Herodotus. Ahh. You want that?’
‘I don’t presume. If it is private.’
‘I have my notes within it. And cuttings. I need it with me.’
‘It was forward of me, excuse me.’
‘When I return I shall show it to you. It is unusual for me to travel without it.’


40)
He had dawdled over his cigar because he was at heart a dilettante, and thinking over a pleasure to come often gave him a subtler satisfaction than its realisation.

41)
It was all this waltzing that had started it. What a crazy business it was! You spun round and round, thinking of nothing. While the music played a whole eternity went by like life in a novel. But directly it stopped you had a feeling of shock, as if a bucket of cold water were splashed over you or someone had found you undressed. Of course, one reason why you allowed anyone to be so familiar was mere showing off — to demonstrate how grown-up you were.


42)
“They say if you can swing you won’t be sea-sick,” he said, as he mounted again. “I don’t believe I should ever be sea-sick.”

Away he went. There was something fascinating to her in him. For the moment he was nothing but a piece of swinging stuff; not a particle of him that did not swing. She could never lose herself so, nor could her brothers.


43)
All I noticed about her that first time was her beauty and her happiness and her way of touching people with her hands, as though she loved them.


44)
His body was as straight as Circe's wand;
Jove might have sipt out nectar from his hand.
Even as delicious meat is to the taste,
So was his neck in touching, and surpast
The white of Pelops' shoulder...


45)
There was something enigmatic about her which was a constant stimulus. She gave little of her real personality away and he felt that however long they were together there would always be a private room inside her which he could never invade. She was thoughtful and full of consideration without being slavish and without compromising her arrogant spirit. And now he knew that she was profoundly, excitingly sensual, but that the conquest of her body, because of the central privacy in her, would each time have the sweet tang of rape. Loving her physically would each time be a thrilling voyage without the anticlimax of arrival. She would surrender herself avidly, he thought, and greedily enjoy all the intimacies of the bed without ever allowing herself to be possessed.

46)
He sounded the clacker till his arm ached, and at length his heart grew sympathetic with the birds’ thwarted desires. They seemed, like himself, to be living in a world which did not want them. Why should he frighten them away? They took upon more and more the aspect of gentle friends and pensioners — the only friends he could claim as being in the least degree interested in him, for his aunt had often told him that she was not. He ceased his rattling, and they alighted anew.


47)
"This night will bring about the death of two fond lovers, and of the two she deserved to live far more than I. 'Tis I who am to blame: poor girl, it was I who killed you! I told you to come, by night, to a place that was full of danger, and did not arrive first myself. Come, all you lions who live beneath this cliff, come and tear me limb from limb!"


48)
Shy, silent did the maid appear
As in the timid forest deer,
Even beneath her parents’ roof
Stood as estranged from all aloof,
Nearest and dearest knew not how
To fawn upon and love express;
A child devoid of childishness
To romp and play she ne’er would go:
Oft staring through the window pane
Would she in silence long remain.


49)
“I hold you in my arms all the way back in the train — I'm angry with every moment that I'm not alone — to love you uninterrupted — whenever my surgery door opens and a patient comes in, my heart jumps in case it might be you. One of them I'm grateful to — he's got neuritis, and I give him sun-ray treatment — he lies quietly baking, and I can be with you in the shadows behind the lamp.”


50)
To his surprise, she had put out the light. He heard the bolts slide on the front door. Drop the chain, he thought automatically. Double-lock the Banhams. How many times do I have to tell you bolts are as weak as the screws that hold them in place? Odd, all the same; he had somehow supposed she would leave the bolts open in case he might return. Then the bedroom light went on, and he saw her body framed in silhouette in the window as, angel-like, she stretched her arms to the curtains. She drew them almost to her, stopped, and momentarily he feared she had seen him, till he remembered her short-sightedness and her refusal to wear glasses. She's going out, he thought; she's going to doll herself up. He saw her head half turn as if she had been addressed. He saw her lips move, and break into a puckish smile as her arms lifed again, this time to the back of her neck, and she began to unfasten the top button of her housecoat. In the same moment, the gap between the curtains was abruptly closed by other, impatient hands.

51)
The audacious nature of Muad'dib's actions may be seen in the fact that He knew from the beginning whither He was bound, yet not once did He step aside from that path. He put it clearly when He said: "I tell you that I come now to my time of testing when it will be shown that I am the Ultimate Servant." Thus He weaves all into One, that both friend and foe may worship Him. It is for this reason and this reason only that His Apostles prayed: "Lord, save us from the other paths which Muad'dib covered with the Waters of His Life." Those "other paths" may be imagined only with the deepest revulsion.


52)
He told his German valet, who ran up to him from the second class, to take his things and go on, and he himself went up to her. He saw the first meeting between the husband and wife, and noted with a lover’s insight the signs of slight reserve with which she spoke to her husband. “No, she does not love him and cannot love him,” he decided to himself.


53)
It could not have been ten seconds, and yet it seemed a long time that their hands were clasped together. He had time to learn every detail of her hand. He explored the long fingers, the shapely nails, the work-hardened palm with its row of callouses, the smooth flesh under the wrist. Merely from feeling it he would have known it by sight. In the same instant it occurred to him that he did not know what colour the girl's eyes were. They were probably brown, but people with dark hair sometimes had blue eyes.


54)
Bellows, blow! Blow on the blaze!
Wild in the wood grew up a tree
that in the forest I felled.
The ash-tree brown to charcol I burned,
that now lies heaped on the hearth.
Ho ho! Ho ho! Ho hi! Ho hi! Ho ho!
Bellows, blow! Blow on the blaze!


55)
'Ladies — boys and gentlemen — we have all listened with interest to the remarks of our friend here who forgot to shave this morning — I don't know his name, but then he didn't know mine — Fitz-Wattle, I mean, absolutely absurd — which squares things up a bit — and we are all sorry that the Reverend What-ever-he-was-called should be dying of adenoids, but after all, here today, gone tomorrow, and all flesh is as grass, and what not, but that wasn't what I wanted to say. What I wanted to say was this — and I say it confidently — without fear of contradiction — I say, in short, I am happy to be here on this auspicious occasion and I take much pleasure in kindly awarding the prizes, consisting of the handsome books you see laid out on that table. As Shakespeare says, there are sermons in books, stones in the running brooks, or rather, the other way about, and there you have it in a nutshell.'

56)
“I regret that we cannot amuse your Majesty here in Strelsau,” she said, tapping her foot lightly on the floor. “I would have offered you more entertainment, but I was foolish enough to think — ”

“Well, what?” I asked, leaning over her.

“That just for a day or two after — after last night — you might be happy without much gaiety;” and she turned pettishly from me, as she added, “I hope the boars will be more engrossing.”


57)
He bribed my servants; an assassin came into my bed chamber by night with a razor in his hand, and found me in a deep sleep. I suffered the most shameful punishment that the revenge of an enemy could invent; in short without losing my life, I lost my manhood. I was punished indeed in the offending part; the desire was left me, but not the possibility of satisfying the passion.


58)
"Most wretched parents, mine and his, I beg this one boon for us both: since our steadfast love and the hour of our death have united us, do not grudge that we be laid together in a single tomb. And you, O tree, already sheltering one hapless body, soon to shelter two, bear for ever the marks of our death: always have fruit of a dark and mournful hue, to make men remember the blood we two have shed!"


59)
Though he was greatly draw to art and history, he scarcely hesitated over the choice of his career. He considered that art was no more a vocation than innate cheerfulness or melancholy were professions.


60)
She looked at him so simply, so brightly, that anyone who did not know her as her husband knew her could not have noticed anything unnatural, either in the sound or the sense of her words. But to him, knowing her, knowing that whenever he went to bed five minutes later than usual, she noticed it, and asked him the reason; to him, knowing that every joy, every pleasure and pain that she felt she communicated to him at once; to him, now to see that she did not care to notice his state of mind, that she did not care to say a word about herself, meant a great deal. He saw that the inmost recesses of her soul, that had always hitherto lain open before him, were closed against him. More than that, he saw from her tone that she was not even perturbed at that, but as it were said straight out to him: “Yes, it’s shut up, and so it must be, and will be in future.” Now he experienced a feeling such as a man might have, returning home and finding his own house locked up.

61)
"Wait for me somewhere. I'll be right back. Where will you wait?"
"Wherever you say."
"Let's see. A little farther." She peered into his face, and abruptly shook her head. "No. I don't want you to."
She threw herself against him. He reeled back a step or two. A row of onions was growing in the thin snow beside the road.
"I hated it." That sudden torrent of words came at him again. "You said I was a good woman, didn't you? You're going away. Why did you have to say that to me?"


62)
She was a girl who for a ringing phone dropped exactly nothing.


63)
"It's delicious — what you've done here," he repeated.
"I like the little house," she admitted; "but I suppose what I like is the blessedness of its being here, in my own country and my own town; and then, of being alone in it." She spoke so low that he hardly heard the last phrase; but in his awkwardness he took it up.
"You like so much to be alone?"
"Yes; as long as my friends keep me from feeling lonely."


64)
By degrees, as I acquired fluency and freedom in their language, and could make such application of its more nervous idioms as suited their case, the elder and more intelligent girls began rather to like me in their way: I noticed that whenever a pupil had been roused to feel in her soul the stirring of worthy emulation, or the quickening of honest shame, from that date she was won. If I could but once make their (usually large) ears burn under their thick glossy hair, all was comparatively well. By-and-by bouquets began to be laid on my desk in the morning; by way of acknowledgment for this little foreign attention, I used sometimes to walk with a select few during recreation. In the course of conversation it befel once or twice that I made an unpremeditated attempt to rectify some of their singularly distorted notions of principle; especially I expressed my ideas of the evil and baseness of a lie. In an unguarded moment, I chanced to say that, of the two errors; I considered falsehood worse than an occasional lapse in church-attendance. The poor girls were tutored to report in Catholic ears whatever the Protestant teacher said. An edifying consequence ensued.


65)
"This is tearing me up inside." Moving up beside me, she pressed my hand fiercely into her belly. "I'm empty. I lie awake at nights aching with emptiness."

66)
Everything she liked that she couldn't possibly use herself, she bought as a present for a friend. She bought colored beads, folding beach cushions, artificial flowers, honey, a guest bed, bags, scarfs, love birds, miniatures for a doll's house and three yards of some new cloth the color of prawns. She bought a dozen bathing suits, a rubber alligator, a travelling chess set of gold and ivory, big linen handkerchiefs for Abe, two chamois leather jackets of kingfisher blue and burning bush from Hermes — bought all these things not a bit like a high-class courtesan buying underwear and jewels, which were after all professional equipment and insurance — but with an entirely different point of view.


67)
"Your family and my family and everyone here tonight made their money out of changing a wilderness into a civilization. That's empire building. There's good money in empire building. But, there's more in empire wrecking."

"What empire are you talking about?"

"This empire we're living in — the South — the Confederacy — the Cotton Kingdom — it's breaking up right under our feet. Only most fools won't see it and take advantage of the situation created by the collapse. I'm making my fortune out of the wreckage."


68)
I can see her smiling at me now. She was beautiful but with a secret beauty. She was not one of the ‘pretty girls’ of the school. Sometimes her face looked heavy, almost dour, and when she cried she looked like the pig-baby in Alice.


69)
'Now that you've seen what I'm really like, can you still bear to look at me?'
'Yes, easily.'
'I'm thirty-nine years old. I've got a wife that I can't get rid of. I've got varicose veins. I've got five false teeth.'


70)
She looked at me for a while. There wasn't any street light close and I couldn't see her face much. But I could feel her looking at me. When we were little when she'd get mad and couldn't do anything about it her upper lip would begin to jump. Every time it jumped it would leave a little more of her teeth showing, and all the time she'd be as still as a post, not a muscle moving except her lip jerking higher and higher up her teeth. But she didn't say anything. She just said,

'All right. How much?'

71)
A man walks as fast as a camel. Two and a half miles an hour. If lucky, he would come upon ostrich eggs. If unlucky, a sandstorm would erase everything. He walked for three days without any food. He refused to think about her.


72)
I heard my voice babbling on, saying its lines, making the suggestions that were too general to be refused, the delicately adjusted assumptions that were to build up into an obligation; I heard my voice consolidating this renewed acquaintance and edging diplomatically a trifle further; but I watched her unpaintable, indescribable face and I wanted to say — you are the most mysterious and beautiful thing in the universe, I want you and your altar and your friends and your thoughts and your world. I am so jealousy-maddened I could kill the air for touching you. Help me. I have gone mad. Have mercy. I want to be you.


73)
“I have no pity! I have no pity! The more the worms writhe, the more I yearn to crush out their entrails! It is a moral teething; and I grind with greater energy in proportion to the increase of pain.”


74)
She had not dug long before she found the body of her unhappy lover, yet nothing changed nor rotted, and thence knew manifestly that her vision was true, wherefore she was the most distressful of women; yet, knowing that this was no place for lament, she would fain, an she but might, have borne away the whole body, to give it fitter burial; but, seeing that this might not be, she with a knife did off the head from the body, as best she could, and wrapping it in a napkin, laid it in her maid's lap. Then, casting back the earth over the trunk, she departed thence, without being seen of any, and returned home, where, shutting herself in her chamber with her lover's head, she bewept it long and bitterly, insomuch that she bathed it all with her tears, and kissed it a thousand times in every part.


75)
So now I must die.

I should be afraid. But I’m not.

Why?

I don’t know. I know only that once I truly decided that the sole way to live here as a man is to do so according to their customs, to risk death, to die — perhaps to die — that suddenly the fear of death was gone. ‘Life and death are the same... Leave karma to karma.’

I am not afraid to die.

Beyond the shoji, a gentle rain had begun to fall. He looked down at the knife.

I’ve had a good life, he thought.

76)
She waited for him, took the flowers, and they went out together, he talking, she feeling dead.

She was going from him now. In her misery she leaned against him as they sat on the car. He was unresponsive. Where would he go? What would be the end of him? She could not bear it, the vacant feeling where he should be. He was so foolish, so wasteful, never at peace with himself. And now where would he go? And what did he care that he wasted her?


77)
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.


78)
The once magnificent image of my love lay now in the hollow of my arm, defenceless as a patient on an operating table, hardly breathing. It was useless even to repeat her name which once held so much fearful magic that it had the power to slow the blood in my veins. She had become a woman at last, lying there, soiled and tattered, like a dead bird in a gutter, her hands crumpled into claws. It was as if some huge iron door had closed forever in my heart.

I could hardly wait for that slow dawn to bring me release. I could hardly wait to be gone.


79)
Thou living hate! Thou wife in every age
Abhorrent, blood-red mother, who didst kill
My sons, and make me as the dead: and still
Canst take the sunshine to thine eyes, and smell
The green earth, reeking from thy deed of hell;
I curse thee!


80)
He put the candles on the lid of the Limoges chest, so that they would be behind his back when he opened the door. He picked up his black cloak and folded it carefully lengthwise into four, after which he wound it round his left hand and forearm as a protection. He picked up the foot-stool from beside the bed, balanced it in his right hand, and took a last look round the room. All the time the noise was getting louder outside, and two men were evidently trying to cut through the wood with their battle-axes, an attempt which was frustrated by the cross grains of the double ply. He went to the door and raised his voice, at which there was immediate silence.

"Fair Lords," he said, "leave your noise and your rashing. I shall set open this door, and then ye may do with me what it liketh you."

81)
What has happened to me is exactly what I willed to happen. I am my own draughtsman. Destiny, force of events, fate, good or bad fortune — all that battered repertory company can be thrown right out of my story, left to starve without a moment's recognition. But somewhere along the line — somewhere along the assembly line, which is what the phrase means — I could have been a different person. What has happened to my emotions is as fantastic as what happens to steel in an American car; steel should always be true to its own nature, always have a certain angularity and heaviness and not be plastic and lacquered; and the basic feelings should be angular and heavy too. I suppose that I had my chance to be a real person.


82)
“Shall we go and sit in the cathedral?” he asked, when their meal was finished.
“Cathedral? Yes. Though I think I’d rather sit in the railway station,” she answered, a remnant of vexation still in her voice. “That’s the centre of the town life now. The cathedral has had its day!”
“How modern you are!”
“So would you be if you had lived so much in the Middle Ages as I have done these last few years! The cathedral was a very good place four or five centuries ago; but it is played out now... I am not modern, either. I am more ancient than mediaevalism, if you only knew.”


83)
Then he went forth riding through Troy. And every place recalled her to his mind. Of these places he continued to hold discourse with himself as he rode on. “There I saw her laugh happily; there I saw her cast her glance upon me; there she graciously saluted me; there I saw her rejoice and there turn thoughtful; there I saw her pitiful of my sighs.

There she was when with her fair and beautiful eyes she made me a captive with love; there she was when she enkindled my heart with a sigh of greater warmth; there she was when her ladylike worthiness condescended to my pleasure; there I saw her haughty, and there humble did my gentle lady show herself to me.”


84)
He went upstairs and fed the cat and stretched out on the bed with the cat on his stomach. You are the best cat, he said. I don't think I ever knew a finer cat.


85)
Thy hand, Belinda; darkness shades me,
On thy bosom let me rest,
More I would, but Death invades me;
Death is now a welcome guest.

When I am laid in earth,
May my wrongs create
No trouble in thy breast;
Remember me, but ah! forget my fate.

86)
I sat on my bed and said to God: You've taken her, but You haven't got me yet. I know Your cunning. It's You who take us up to a high place and offer us the whole universe. You're a devil, God, tempting us to leap. But I don't want Your peace and I don't want Your love. I wanted something very simple and very easy: I wanted Sarah for a lifetime and You took her away. With Your great schemes You ruin our happiness like a harvester ruins a mouse's nest: I hate You, God, I hate You as though You existed.


87)
“What does Mrs. Montgomery say about him?”
“That he has talents by which he might distinguish himself.”
“Only he is lazy, eh?”
“She doesn’t say so.”
“That’s family pride,” said the Doctor. “What is his profession?”


88)
His wet yellow face was set hard and deeply lined. His eyes burned madly. He said: "Listen. This isn't a damned bit of good. You'll never understand me, but I'll try once more and then we'll give it up. Listen. When a man's partner is killed he's supposed to do something about it. It doesn't make any difference what you thought of him. He was your partner and you're supposed to do something about it."


89)
Oh go not yet, my love,
The night is dark and vast;
The white moon is hid in her heaven above,
And the waves climb high and fast.
Oh! kiss me, kiss me, once again,
Lest thy kiss should be the last.
Oh kiss me ere we part;
Grow closer to my heart.
My heart is warmer surely than the bosom of the main.


90)
He heard the distant sound of laughter, and he turned his head toward its source. A group of students had cut across his back-yard lawn; they were hurrying somewhere. He saw them distinctly; there were three couples. The girls were long-limbed and graceful in their light summer dresses, and the boys were looking at them with a joyous and bemused wonder. They walked lightly upon the grass, hardly touching it, leaving no trace of where they had been. He watched them as they went out of his sight, where he could not see; and for a long time after they had vanished the sound of their laughter came to him, far and unknowing in the quiet of the summer afternoon.

What did you expect? he thought again.

91)
On and on went the wanderer slowly, as though she would fain turn backward, on and up the stairs she knew so well, through the long quiet passages, and as she walked her tears fell yet more fast.

In a room at the end of the long passages stood the knight. A torch burnt dully by his side. As he stood there thinking of the days that had passed away for ever, he heard steps coming slowly along the passage. He listened, and, as he listened, the slow footsteps halted outside his door.


92)
I blush to tell thee, (but I’ll tell thee now)
For every sigh that thou hast spent for me,
I have sighed ten; for every tear shed twenty:
And not so much for that I loved, as that
I durst not say I loved; nor scarcely think it.


93)
"All right." He turned blindly to the door — before him, leering and nodding, was the man who had brought him to the police station. "I'll go home," he shouted, "but first I'll fix this baby."

He walked past the staring carabinieri and up to the grinning face, hit it with a smashing left beside the jaw. The man dropped to the floor.

For a moment he stood over him in savage triumph — but even as a first pang of doubt shot through him the world reeled; he was clubbed down, and fists and boots beat on him in a savage tattoo. He felt his nose break like a shingle and his eyes jerk as if they had snapped back on a rubber band into his head. A rib splintered under a stamping heel.


94)
We have been married now eight years. Doesn't it occur to you that this is the first time we two, you and I, husband and wife, have had a serious conversation?


95)
The queen is alone now, as alone as she has ever been in her life. She says, Christ have mercy, Jesus have mercy, Christ receive my soul. She raises one arm, again her fingers go to the coif, and he thinks, put your arm down, for God's sake put your arm down, and he could not will it more if —

96)
'Good night,' he said. 'I cannot take you to your hotel?'
'No, thank you.'
'It was the only thing to do,' he said. 'The operation proved — '
'I do not want to talk about it,' I said.


97)
. . . . . . . . . . Gone, my lord the King,
My own true lord! how dare I call him mine?
The shadow of another cleaves to me,
And makes me one pollution: he, the King,
Called me polluted: shall I kill myself?
What help in that? I cannot kill my sin,
If soul be soul; nor can I kill my shame;
No, nor by living can I live it down.
The days will grow to weeks, the weeks to months
The months will add themselves and make the years,
The years will roll into the centuries,
And mine will ever be a name of scorn.


98)
I saw the fire run up her form. I saw her lift it with both hands as though it were water, and pour it over her head. I even saw her open her mouth and draw it down into her lungs, and a dread and wonderful sight it was.

Then she paused, and stretched out her arms, and stood there quite still, with a heavenly smile upon her face, as though she were the very Spirit of the Flame.


99)
Remember me.
I have forgotten you.
I am going into the darkness of the darkness for ever.
I have forgotten that I was ever born.


100)
I leave the road at the bottom of the valley and walk singing up the hill. Those few I let come this far with me have been told to abide my return. They shiver in the sunset; the vernal equinox is three days away. I feel no cold myself. I stride exultant among briars and twisted ancient apple trees. If my bare feet leave a little blood in the snow, that is good. The ridges around are dark with forest, which waits like the skeleton dead for leaves to be breathed across it again. The eastern sky is purple, where stands the evening star. Overhead, against blue, cruises an early flight of homebound geese. Their calls drift faintly down to me. Westward, above me and before me, smoulders redness. Etched black against it are the women.

>>21676795
11 is Faulkner?
Is 5 Hemingway?

>>21676992
>11 is Faulkner?
It is.

>Is 5 Hemingway?
Nope. A bit lighter than EH.

>>21677218
11 is TSATF. I don't remember this section, but the narration is too American sounding for Joyce and Faulkner is about the only other guy who goes pages without any punctuation at all.

>>21676780
I love the idea, but we have impossibly diverging tastes in literature. 31. and 51. are Chani and Paul from Dune.

>>21677242
>11 is TSATF
Correct. Now we just need someone to match it up.

>>21677267
>I love the idea, but we have impossibly diverging tastes in literature.
Yeah, I think this one might have turned out too tricky. It seemed like a good idea while I was doing it. We'll see how we go.

>31. and 51. are Chani and Paul from Dune.
Correct. (To be precise, #51 is from Dune: Messiah.)

>>21676780
Hey quizanon, if you're interested in coming on the podcast, Unreal Press wants to interview you.
https://discord.gg/8TG2Vxy2

47 and 58: Pyramus and Thisbe. Ovid, right?

54 feels like Wagner. Siegfried getting his sword forged? Is 15 Brunhilde on her rock? (I was expecting the Wagner to be Tristan and Isolde, so this caught me off guard.)

80 is Lancelot caught by Morded et al. in Guinevere's chamber. The passage reads too modern to be Le Morte d'Arthur and I don't see Malory in the list, but T. H. White is there, so it must be Once and Future King. 97 sounds like Guinevere soon after, but I don't know what work this is.

P.S. I love all of these excerpts, even though I recognize so few of them. We don't deserve you, quizanon-sama.

>>21676791
6 seems to be Suttree. With that lack of quotations and attribution it is certainly McCarthy.

85 is Dido, from the opera "Dido and Aeneas". But that's as far as I can go with it.

>>21677386
Hmm, that sounds suspiciously close to real-world interaction, which I find fairly unnerving. I'll think about it.

>>21677475
It is McCarthy, yes, but not Suttree. Perhaps another anon can put the ball in the net.

>>21677462
The Duck Man returns. Or even Ducks Man in the plural.


>47 and 58: Pyramus and Thisbe. Ovid, right?
Correct. Lions, mulberry bushes, absurd double-suicides.


>54 feels like Wagner. Siegfried getting his sword forged? Is 15 Brunhilde on her rock?
Both correct. Siegfried & Die Walkure respectively.

>(I was expecting the Wagner to be Tristan and Isolde, so this caught me off guard.)
That would have been too easy. (I was tempted to go for Siegmund & Sieglinde from Die Walkure, but I already had enough brother-sister incest.)


>80 is Lancelot caught by Morded et al. in Guinevere's chamber. The passage reads too modern to be Le Morte d'Arthur and I don't see Malory in the list, but T. H. White is there, so it must be Once and Future King.
Correct.

>97 sounds like Guinevere soon after,
Correct.

>but I don't know what work this is.
It's a pretty mainstream version. Probably just going through the authors list for people who wrote in blank verse will get there. It's not translated.

>>21677519
>85 is Dido, from the opera "Dido and Aeneas".
Correct. A guy called Nahum Tate wrote the libretto, but I think it's fair just to count it as Virgil in the authors list.

>>21677631
Thanks for the tip. I'm thinking Tennyson.

>>21677811
Right. Idylls of the King.

44 is Leander, from Marlowe's "Hero and Leander".

>>21678169
>44 is Leander, from Marlowe's "Hero and Leander".
Correct. CM looking at an attractive young man the way a fat kid looks at cake.

18 - Criseyde, from Chaucer's story of Troilus and her.

77 - Juliet, from Shakespeare's story of Romeo and her.

1 - Laura, in Noel Coward's "Still life"

17 - King Henry, in Robert Bolt's "A man for all seasons"

>>21679196
>18 - Criseyde, from Chaucer's story of Troilus and her.
>77 - Juliet, from Shakespeare's story of Romeo and her.
Both correct.

>>21680132
>1 - Laura, in Noel Coward's "Still life"
Correct. One of the hardest I thought.

>17 - King Henry, in Robert Bolt's "A man for all seasons"
Correct. Of course there are a number of candidates for his ill-fated other half.

>>21676843
>79)
Is this Medea from the Euripides play?

>>21680322
>79)
>Is this Medea from the Euripides play?
Correct. (Well, it's Jason talking. If A talks about B it's a bit ambiguous whether A or B is the subject of the quotation.)

>>21676786
2 - George Smiley, in John Le Carre's "Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy"

3 - Sammy, in William Golding's "Free fall"

4 - Romeo, in Shakespeare's "Romeo & Juliet"

>>21681361

>2 - George Smiley, in John Le Carre's "Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy"
>3 - Sammy, in William Golding's "Free fall"
Correct. Their other halves are still to be found, though.

>4 - Romeo, in Shakespeare's "Romeo & Juliet"
Correct, and someone already located his girl, I believe.

5 - the photo depicts James Bond, in "From Russia with love".

6 - Alicia Western, in Cormac McCarthy's "Stella maris"

7 - Isabella, by John Keats

>>21676780
Kek what is this crap? People memorize these mediocrities and quiz themselves on it? Is it an amerimutt thing?

>>21681841
>5 - the photo depicts James Bond, in "From Russia with love".
Correct. Of course the girl could be one of several I guess.

>6 - Alicia Western, in Cormac McCarthy's "Stella maris"
Of course. Now we just have to find the object of her affection.

>7 - Isabella, by John Keats
Correct (as mentioned, it's sort of ambiguous whether he or she is the focus of the excerpt).

8 - Right Ho, Jeeves (PG Wodehouse); Madeline Bassett

9 - Medea (Euripedes)

10 - Stoner's mistress (John Williams) in "Stoner"

>>21682037
>8 - Right Ho, Jeeves (PG Wodehouse); Madeline Bassett
Correct.

>9 - Medea (Euripedes)
Correct, and this pairs up with one already found.

>10 - Stoner's mistress (John Williams) in "Stoner"
Correct, although it seems a bit churlish not to give the poor girl a name.

By the way, I made half of the guesses ITT and I just looked them up on Google lol

12 - Heloise, in a letter to Abelard

13 - Ted Hughes, "The thought fox"

14 - Dashiell Hammett, from "The Maltese falcon", describing Miss Wonderley.

>>21682136
you're no fun

>>21683487
>12 - Heloise, in a letter to Abelard
>13 - Ted Hughes, "The thought fox"
Correct.

>14 - Dashiell Hammett, from "The Maltese falcon", describing Miss Wonderley.
Sort of. She SAYS she's Miss Wonderley.

>>21683487
>12 - Heloise, in a letter to Abelard
>13 - Ted Hughes, "The thought fox"
Correct.

>14 - Dashiell Hammett, from "The Maltese falcon", describing Miss Wonderley.
Sort of. She SAYS she's Miss Wonderley.


It seems odd not to give the corresponding answers. Perhaps you're leaving it open for another anon to complete the pairings?

Bump.

Answers found so far:

Couples:
4 & 77 — Romeo & Juliet ('Romeo & Juliet', Shakespeare)
9 & 79 — Medea & Jason ('Medea', Euripedes)
15 & 54 — Brunnhilde & Siegfriend ('Die Walkure' & 'Siegfried', Richard Wagner)
31 & 51 — Chani & Paul ('Dune' & 'Dune:Messiah', Frank Herbert)
47 & 58 — Pyramus & Thisbe ('Metamorphoses', Ovid)
80 & 97 — Lancelot & Guinevere ('The Once and Future King', T. H. White & 'Idylls of the King', Tennyson)

Individuals / Books:
1 — Laura ('Still Life', Noel Coward)
2 — George Smiley ('Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy', John Le Carré)
3 — Sammy Mountjoy ('Free Fall', William Golding)
5 — James Bond ('From Russia With Love', Ian Fleming)
6 — Alicia Western ('Stella Maris', Cormac McCarthy)
7 — 'Isabella, or the Pot of Basil', John Keats
8 — Madeline Bassett ('Right Ho, Jeeves', P. G. Wodehouse)
10 — 'Stoner', John Williams
11 — 'The Sound and the Fury', William Faulkner
12 — Héloise du Paraclet (letter to Peter Abelard)
13 — 'The Thought Fox', Ted Hughes
14 — 'The Maltese Falcon', Dashiell Hammett
17 — King Henry ('A Man For All Seasons', Robert Bolt)
18 — Criseyde ('Troilus & Criseyde', Geoffrey Chaucer)
44 — Leander ('Hero & Leander', Christopher Marlowe)
85 — Dido ('Didio & Aeneas', after Virgil)

Is #38 Dryden's translation of the Aeneid?

I think 34 is Plath but I'm not sure.

>>21685147
>Is #38 Dryden's translation of the Aeneid?
It is. They loved these heroic couplets in the 18th century. Of course Virgil, as a serious Roman, would have considered rhyming vulgar, but never mind.

(That pairs up with 85, if it wasn't obvious.)

>>21685215
>I think 34 is Plath but I'm not sure.
It is. "Sheep in Fog". (And someone already found her other half.)

Bump.

16 - Catherine, in Henry James' "Washington Square"

19 - Justine, in Lawrence Durrell's "The Alexandria quartet"