Favorite Quotations discovered during the July/August 2012 ReadaThing

Use this thread to share your favorite quotations from the books you are reading during the ReadaThing.

General comments, reactions, book reports, and/or musings can be posted in the LOGBOOK thread.

I'm off to start reading now . . .

- I was in a palace by the sea, full of light and beauty, haunted by music, sacred to poetry and enchanted by its inhabitants who seemed to me to come from another age and another world.
Then I met Lancelot. -

- The Winter King - Bernard Cornwell.

Not really read for ReadaThing but I did finish it this morning. I love this quote from Un Lun Dun by China Mièville. It made my smile. (I'm a library clerk.)

"Wait . . . really?" the woman said excitedly. "You're a traveler? You came by story ladder? My goodness. It's been years since we've had an explorer. It's not an easy journey, after all. Still, you know what they say: 'All bookshelves lead to the Wordhoard Pit.' And here you are.
"I'm Margarita Staples." She bowed in her harness. "Extreme librarian. Bookaneer."

>3 mamzel: Marvelous!

This morning I read Madeleine L'Engle's poem "Mrs. Noah Speaking" in her collection The Ordering of Love . . . it always makes me chuckle.

It begins:
"I suppose under the circumstances there’s really no point in complaining but really! Noah and I had just got accustomed to living alone and having some peace and quiet and fixing up the house the way we wanted it at last."

Someone has posted the full poem here:
http://writingcanvas.wordpress.com/2006/05/03/mrs-noah-speaking/

Enjoy!

I read this on the porch this morning, waiting for it to rain:

"Son, if the mountain was smooth, you couldn't climb it."

from Clara and Mr. Tiffany by Susan Vreeland

From The Hobbit

"If you have ever seen a dragon in a pinch, you will realize that this was only poetical exaggeration applied to any hobbit even to Old Took's great-grand-uncle Bullroarer, who was so huge (for a hobbit) that he could ride a horse. He charged the ranks of the goblins of Mount Gram in the Battle of the Green Fields, and knocked their king Golfimbul's head clean off with a wooden club. It sailed a hundred yards through the air and went down a rabbit-hole, and in this way the battle was won and the game of Golf invented at the same moment."

Lots of great quotes in The Woman Who Died a Lot so far, but here's one I figured you'd all enjoy:

"'Do I have to talk to insane people?'
'You're a librarian now. I'm afraid it's mandatory.'"

Yes! That's nice one!

"Stella is frequently absorbed by what she has to read and write. She is simultaneously daunted and exhilarated —daunted by her perception of knowledge and her recognition of the fact that she can never do more than scratch the surface, exhilarated because she has realised that learning is the arousal and satisfaction of curiosity. And she is abidingly curious. Sitting in libraries, she has come to see that for the rest of her life she will be prompted to ask questions and try to find answers. She feels that her mind is expanding, month by month. Sometimes it seems to brim with discovery."

from Spiderweb by Penelope Lively

Ohh . . . love Penelope Lively!! You've reminded me that I have a couple of hers that need to move higher up my list of TBRs (and a few others I need to acquire—*sigh*).

"In Those Years" by Adrienne Rich

In those years, people will say, we lost track
of the meaning of we, of you
we found ourselves
reduced to I
and the whole thing became
silly, ironic, terrible:
we were trying to live a personal life
and, yes, that was the only life
we could bear witness to

But the great dark birds of history screamed and plunged
into our personal weather
They were headed somewhere else but their beaks and pinions drove
along the shore, through the rags of fog
where we stood, saying I

1991
from Dark Fields of the Republic

Reading this now, it is difficult not to read it as a "9-11 poem", though it was written a decade earlier.

Thats really a beautifull quote, LucindaL. I really like it.

"Now that physics is proving the intelligence of the universe what are we to do about the stupidity of mankind? I include myself."

Gut Symmetries by Jeanette Winterson