Day 17 – Favorite quote(s) from your favorite book(s)

It’s impossible to compile a definitive list of favorites, but I think a very appropriate and relevant line would be from Locks, a poem by Neil Gaiman that was published in Fragile Things: “We owe it to each other to tell stories.”

Similarly relevant, a line from Transmetropolitan:

These are their stories. And when you ask yourself how this could have come to pass, understand: there is a reason.

And some stuff from Ender’s Game (I know it’s ancient, but it’s also haunting):

ENDER: “…And it came down to this: In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them -”
Valentine: “You beat them.”
Ender: “No, you don’t understand. I destroy them. I make it impossible for them to ever hurt me again. I grind them and grind them till they don’t exist.”

“You scared us. They said you were crazy, and we said they were crazy.”
“I’m crazy,” said Ender. “But I think I’m OK.”

One more from Orson Scott Card; a line from a short story in Cruel Miracles:

Jesus cured the blind people and the deaf people and the crippled people and the lepers. But as far as I remember, the Bible don’t say he ever cured even one son-of-a-bitch.

I forget which THHGTTG book this was, but it stuck to me for some reason:

Slartibartfast: “Overnight, the whole population of Krikkit was transformed from being charming, delightful, intelligent…”
Arthur: “…if whimsical…”
Slartibartfast: “…ordinary people into charming, delightful, intelligent…”
Arthur: “…whimsical…”
Slartibartfast: “…manic xenophobes. The idea of a Universe didn’t fit into their world picture, so to speak. They simply couldn’t cope with it. And so, charmingly, delightfully, intelligently, whimsically if you like, they decided to destroy it.”

Not a book, but from a short story by Ted Chiang called Exhalation:

Because even if a universe’s lifespan is calculable, the variety of life that is generated within it is not. The buildings we have erected, the art and music and verse we have composed, the very lives we’ve led: none of them could have been predicted, because none of them were inevitable. Our universe might have slid into equilibrium emitting nothing more than a quiet hiss. The fact that it spawned such plenitude is a miracle, one that is matched only by your universe giving rise to you.

From Small Gods:

Simony: “Look… listen… We died for lies, for centuries we died for lies. Now we’ve got a truth to die for!”
Brutha: “No. Men should die for lies. But the truth is too precious to die for.”

From Y: The Last Man:

ALLISON: “You have a big heart.”
YORICK: “Ugh, stop! This has been sappy enough. I want to remember you belittling my many short-comings, not leaving me with a compliment.”
ALLISON: “Enlarged hearts are weak and fragile, Yorick. It wasn’t a compliment. It was a warning.”

From Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes:

Why love the woman who is your wife? Because her flesh knows heat, cold, affliction, I know fire, snow and pain. Shared and once again shared experience. Billions of prickling textures. Cut one sense away, cut part of life away. Cut two senses; life halves itself on the instant. We love what we know, we love what we are. Common cause, common sense, common cause of mouth, eye, tongue, hand, nose, flesh, heart and soul.

More Neil Gaiman (FAVORITE FOREVERRRR):

There is another version of the tale. That is the tale the women tell each other, in their private language that the men-children are not taught, and that the old men are too wise to learn. And in that version of the tale perhaps things happened differently. But then, that is a women’s tale, and it is never told to men.

dream: “You should have gone to the funeral.”
Orpheus: “Why?”
Dream: “To say goodbye.”
Orpheus: “I have not yet said goodbye to Eurydice.”
Dream: “You are mortal: it is the mortal way. You attend the funeral, you bid the dead farewell. You grieve. Then you continue with your life. And at times the fact of her absence will hit you like a blow to the chest, and you will weep. But this will happen less and less as time goes on. She is dead. You are alive. So live.”

I do not fear cities sleeping, stretched out unconscious around their rivers and estuaries, like cats in the moonlight. Sleeping cities are tame and harmless things. What I fear… is that one day the cities will waken. That one day the cities will rise.

All Bette’s stories have happy endings. That’s because she knows where to stop. She’s realized the real problem with stories – if you keep them going long enough, they always end in death.

I like the stars. It’s the illusion of permanence, I think. I mean, they’re always flaring up and caving in and going out. But from here, I can pretend… I can pretend that things last. I can pretend that lives last longer than moments. Gods come, and gods go. Mortals flicker and flash and fade. Worlds don’t last; and stars and galaxies are transient, fleeting things that twinkle like fireflies and vanish into cold and dust. But I can pretend.

Stories are like spiders, with all they long legs, and stories are like spiderwebs, which man gets himself all tangled up in but which look so pretty when you see them under a leaf in the morning dew, and in the elegant way that they connect to one another, each to each. What’s that? You want to know if Anansi looked like a spider? Sure he did, except when he looked like a man. No, he never changed his shape. It’s just a matter of how you tell the story. That’s all.

Bod: “Does it work? Are they happier dead?”
Silas: “Sometimes. Mostly, no. It’s like the people who believe they’ll be happy if they go and live somewhere else, but who learn it doesn’t work that way. Wherever you go, you take yourself with you.”

Cat: “Cats don’t have names.”
Coraline: “No?”
Cat: “No. Now, you people have names. That’s because you don’t know who you are.”

Kavalier & Clay:

George Deasey: “Do you know why they have to fuck each other?”
Bartender: “What’s that?”
George Deasey: “I said. Do you know why Batman and Robin have to fuck each other?”
Bartender: “Now, why is that?”
George Deasey: “Because they can’t fuck themselves. The way you can.”

Aaaaand the obligatory ~inspiring~ quote from Letters from a Young Poet:

Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.