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/lit/ - Literature


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7538111 No.7538111 [Reply] [Original]

What's your single favourite line from a book, /lit/?

>> No.7538116

>Aujourd’hui, maman est morte.
It's simple, and it sets the tone of the book well.

>> No.7538125
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7538125

>>7538111
I know saying this is really beating a dead horse, but
“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

This never fails to give me chills, I always feel melancholic after reading it.

>> No.7538166

Y a veces me sucedía que cuando yo pasaba frente a una de mis ventanas ella estaba esperándome muda y ansiosa (¿por qué esperándome? ¿y por qué muda y ansiosa?); pero a veces sucedía que ella no llegaba a tiempo o se olvidaba de este pobre ser encajonado, y entonces yo, con la cara apretada contra el muro de vidrio, la veía a los lejos sonreír o bailar despreocupadamente o, lo que era peor, no la veía en absoluto y la imaginaba en lugares inaccesibles o torpes. Y entonces sentía que mi destino era infinitamente más solitario que lo que había imaginado.

>> No.7538202

>>7538111
He had hands which grimaced, hands which sneered; he had hands which explained, expostulated, threatened, wept; which touched like buttocks in apparent prayer, which joked, which jeered; hands that danced and sang and held the dagger—creating, conducting, eliciting the word—hands which uttered every innuendo, misled, lied, which latched and locked, insulted and defied; hands which greeted one another like old boozing friends, which squeezed yours unexpectedly and left them wet; outstretched, open, pleading hands crisscrossed by lines for life and love and fate, runnels rushing toward the twiddle finger, fat and ringed, the Mounts of Moon and Mercury rising from a plain of soft pink skin, the Girdle of Venus, too, a Via Lasciva like some Gasse in Hamburg; head, health, heart lines, and all the pulpy cushions of the palm, etched as finely as a counterfeiter's plate; hands wholly unlike mine, like Pilate's, water and towel to one another, thumbs and fingers disappearing into the shadow of a duck, a fox, a bear, a skirt; hands which were the equal of another's eye; which were, from time to time, I'm sure, both cock and cunt.

>> No.7538211
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7538211

>>7538111
>Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven.

They should do a modern version of Paradise Lost like that one version of Romeo and Juliet with guns.

>> No.7538610

>>7538111
Alright then, I'll go to hell.

>> No.7538623

>>7538211
>modern paradise lost
i'd fund it

>> No.7538627
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7538627

>>7538610
THEN I'LL SEE YOU IN HELL!!!!

>> No.7538650

>>7538623
Didn't they do this and isn't it called Dogma"

>> No.7538661

>>7538116
>>7538166
ENGRISH PREASE

>> No.7538696
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7538696

I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

>> No.7538709

>>7538696
Muh dik

>> No.7538717

>>7538696
>look at thumbnail
>haven't seen this dfw meme before

>> No.7538720

END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK

>> No.7538731

>>7538111
'Inevitable, that the fiery soul of humanity races forward to a future of ash'

If anyone know what this is from I'll eat my hat

>> No.7538734
File: 127 KB, 1280x720, Carrie Fisher.jpg [View same] [iqdb] [saucenao] [google]
7538734

>>7538696
How did we go from that to this?

>> No.7538753

>>7538734
someday you'll get old. unless you die first. choose one.

>> No.7538759

Longtemps, je me suis couché de bonne heure.

>> No.7539158
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7539158

>>7538696
>>7538734
Don't know.

>> No.7539841

"It is sometimes an appropriate response to reality to go insane."

>>7538610
>IF THE ZOO BANS ME FOR HOLLERING AT THE ANIMALS I WILL FACE GOD AND WALK BACKWARDS INTO HELL
>dril, 2012

>> No.7539851
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7539851

>>7538111
>God's in heaven, all's right in the world
This line killed and buried 90% of my edginess for good.

>> No.7539856

>Canary burgundy, I call it lemon red, yellow diamonds in my ear, call em Lemonheads

>> No.7539884

To die or not to die, that was the question.

>> No.7539904

Not fuck, like in those movies.

>> No.7539916

The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again: but already it was impossible to say which was which.

>> No.7539995
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7539995

"I put the toilet lid up and tugged out the frankfurter."

>> No.7540017

>>7538111
>Mytia and Blyatinov have arrived. now we are reunited, The Brothers Karamazov Translated by Volokhonsky & Pevear with a foreword by Vladimir Nabokov

>> No.7540047

“St Kilda presented man with almost insurmountable odds. Under such conditions of geography and climate Man became infinitesimal before the Infinite”

- Tom Steel, “The Life and Death of St Kilda”

>> No.7540221

From the docks a ship's siren unsourced itself.

>> No.7540412

This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt.

>> No.7540428
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7540428

>>7539995
Norwegian is funny like that. We have a lot of idiomatic expressions for taking a shit and piss.

Like: "Skvise ut en Snickers" = Squeezing out a Snickers.

"Sjösette Obama" = Set sail to Obama

And for pissing we have stuff like: "Strupe jöden" = Strangling the Jew.

>> No.7540457
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7540457

>> No.7540464
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7540464

"So it goes"

>> No.7540472

>>7538111

“If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—for ever.”

>> No.7540482

"All was well."

The last sentence of the book series that got me into reading as a child.

>> No.7540491

>>7539856

killa cam is definitely /lit/

>> No.7540503

>>7540464
So it goes.

>> No.7540511

>>7538734

Rampant cocaine abuse, monthly ECT treatment, sic transit gloria mundi, etc.

Carrie Fisher's completely bats.

It's actually amazing she isn't looking much, much worse.

>> No.7540513

>>7538111

“I'm a bit retarded, like most Americans.”

>> No.7540515

"and but so"

Thinking about getting it as a tattoo.

>> No.7540537

>>7540515

Why not get a "This is Water" tattoo instead?

I'm calling one, very persistent troll in this thread.

>> No.7540566

>>7540537
>I'm calling one, very persistent troll in this thread.

What do you mean by this?

>> No.7540568

>>7538720
Underrated post

>> No.7540570

I'm complex.

>> No.7541776 [SPOILER] 
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7541776

>>7540428

>> No.7541832

>>7540428

Laying cables

>> No.7541839

>>7538661
Today, mamma is dead.
>not knowing basic French and Spanish
How do you EVEN lit?

>> No.7541860

>>7538734
Well, would you fuck her now? I would.

>> No.7541877
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7541877

"And but so in the end it was all just an infinite Jest"

>> No.7541890

In sooth, I know not why I am so sad.

>> No.7542427

>>7538116
My English edition keeps it at maman and I love that decision.

>> No.7542431

>>7540464
I wrote a punk song ten years ago with this refrain. No one got it. They wanted me to change it. I still loved it.

>> No.7542438

>>7541839
>Today, mamma is dead.

It's passed tense baka desu senpai. Mother died today.

>> No.7542439

>>7538627
Underrated.

>> No.7542477

>>7538111
Hosanna to the Son of David. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord - Book of Matthew
I find it rhythmically pleasing in English.

>> No.7542490

>>7542477
Shittiest line in the bible desu.

>> No.7542494

>>7538111
“She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on the balcony railing, holding the universe together.”
— J. D. Salinger, A Girl I Knew

>> No.7542766

"Human life isn't even worth a line of Baudelaire."

>> No.7542792
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7542792

>>7538111
I don't have one, but I love the entire monologue that this quote comes from in Cyrano de Bergerac. Shit I love the play, and the real man was one of the grandfathers of science-fiction writing.

"I am too proud to be a parasite,
And if my nature wants the germ that grows
Towering to heaven like the mountain pine,
Or like the oak, sheltering multitudes-
I stand, not high it may be-but alone!”

>> No.7542798

>>7538623
I've wanted it forever. There are a few literary works focused on Christianity that I've wanted to see as movies which seem to be ignored for shit like Legion.

>> No.7542833

""What?"
–Richard Nixon"
–Thomas Pynchon

>> No.7542856

>>7538111
Crime and Punishment
I more or less worship Sonya in some deranged pseudo christian way

>> No.7542902

>>7542766
>Human life isn't even worth a line of Baudelaire

name?

>> No.7542923
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7542923

My God, a whole moment of happiness! Is that too little for the whole of a man's life?

>> No.7542927

>>7542902
A Fool's Life by Ryuunosuke Akutagawa. It's very autobiographical and he wrote it just before he killed himself. His short stories are very different, but still great nonetheless.

>> No.7542939

"Those who will not reason, are bigots, those who cannot, are fools, and those who dare not, are slaves."

>> No.7542952

O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.

>> No.7542953

>>7542923
That's from White Nights, right? I just re-read it this week, but are you sure that translation is right? The translation I read (in Portuguese of Portugal) says something more to the lines of "My God, a whole minute of happiness! After all, isn't that enough to fill a man's whole life?", which seems more... adequate, considering the character who said it. I don't know shit about this translation I read though, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was wrong or at least not exactly right/close to the original meaning.

>> No.7542964

>>7540570

>complex

Dear god, triggered. Did anyone else find the frequency of this word totally jarring?

>> No.7542966

>One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner.

>> No.7542980

>>7538111
“In my dreams I kiss your cunt, your sweet wet cunt. In my thoughts I make love to you all day long.”
The book was meh but I always loved this line. I went to a rave once and used it as an opener. It was pretty funny.

>> No.7542986

>>7538610

I remember watching a documentary on Independent Lens about 10 years back about a super-enthusiastic English teacher who taught Shakespeare and American writers to inner-city youth at a public school. Young kids, like 12 or 13. There was a scene where they were reading that section of Huck Finn and this one little kid read that line out loud and just burst into tears.

I've never experienced a book that fully, and it was a beautiful scene

>> No.7542993

>>7538111

"See the child."

>> No.7543018

>>7539851
that line made you think you lost your edginess

>> No.7543025

>>7542438
today, maman died.

if you're a pedantic French that can't engrish

>> No.7543228

>>7542952
>Hamlet
Entry level at best desu.

>> No.7543238

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.

>> No.7543245

>Alackaday, and fuck my luck

I say this to myself sometimes. Idk why

>> No.7543527

>>7538111
>"Since the times of John the Baptist the Kingdom of Heaven suffereth violence, and the violent bear it away."

>> No.7543560

"If you want to shine like a sun first you have to burn like it!"

>> No.7543636

>>7538111
Well I'm pleb tier, but Vonnegut has some great ones.

>> No.7543669

>>7538111
So it goes...

>> No.7543786

>>7538111
A creaming came across the pie.

>> No.7544124

>>7540482
I especially love the first line, I even got the initials as my password.

"Mr. and Mrs. Dursley were proud being completely normal"

>> No.7544131
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7544131

>>7542980
Did you score?

>> No.7544580

>>7538720
keks

>> No.7544588

>>7542986
That was probably one of the fifteen million movies made with that exact premise.

>> No.7544606

"The boy's face was obliterated in a sheet of blood."

>> No.7544640

>>7542964
frequency of this word?
It's used like twice within 1079 pages.