More awesome quotes.
I should mention that I take the time to type these out, not because I'm bored and want to show off that I read stuff. It's because a) they generate great ideas, and b) maybe by catching some small snapshot of an author's writing and expression, you'll be encouraged to read a book that will change your life. Also, c) MAYBE someone out there has the same favorite moments of literature that I do, and we can telepathically relish in the deliciousness and intimacy together.
What is it about a certain passage in a book that moves me, that makes me nod and go "mm"? An illuminating realization, a description that puts a smile on your face, or oftentimes, a perfect depiction of something I have felt in the past but lacked the eloquence to articulate on my own.
From Conrad's Heart of Darkness-
No, I don't like work. I had rather laze about and think of all the fine things that can be done. I don't like work--no man does--but I like what is in the work,--the chance to find yourself. Your own reality--for yourself, not for others--what no other man can ever know. They can only see the mere show, and never can tell what it really means.
And the lofty frontal bone of Mr. Kurtz! They say the hair goes on growing sometimes, but this--ah specimen, was impressively bald. The wilderness had patted him on the head, and, behold, it was like a ball--an ivory ball; it had caressed him, and--lo!--he had withered; it had taken him, loved him, embraced him, got into his veins, consumed his flesh, and sealed his soul to its own by the inconceivable ceremonies of some initiation. He was its spoiled and pampered favorite.
It was a kind of partnership...and thus a subtle bond had been created, of which I only became aware when it was suddenly broken. And the intimate profundity of that look he gave me when he received his hurt remains to this day in my memory--like a claim of distant kinship affirmed in a supreme moment.
From George Bernard Shaw's sequel to "Pygmalion"-
Eliza...was instinctively aware that she could never obtain a complete grip of him...to put it shortly, she knew that for some mysterious reason he had not the makings of a married man in him, according to her conception of a husband as one to whom she would be his nearest and fondest and warmest interest...to those who have the greatest power of loving, love is a secondary affair...
Gosh, I hope not.
And from James Joyce's The Dead-
She was walking on before him so lightly and so erect that he longed to run after her noiselessly, catch her by the shoulders and say something foolish and affectionate into her ear. She seemed to him so frail that he longed to defend her against something and then to be alone with her. Moments of their secret life together burst like stars upon his memory.
Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, then fade and wither dismally with age...He had never felt like that himself towards any woman, but he knew that such a feeling must be love.
