Author Topic: Random Excerpt  (Read 32378 times)

pixote

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Random Excerpt
« on: February 28, 2009, 05:23:21 PM »
"Oh honestly, Jane," Simon said.  "You can't find a treasure map and just say, 'Oh, how nice,' and put it back again."

          — Susan Cooper, "Over Sea, Under Stone"
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pixote

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Re: Random Excerpt
« Reply #1 on: March 13, 2009, 05:17:21 AM »
Eric had a German shepherd named Fang, who had been driven out of its mind by all the tricks people played on it.  Whenever it barked too much at night, Eric came out to the doghouse with a big gob of peanut butter, which he stuck on the roof of Fang's mouth.  Then all you'd heard would be tongue-smacking noises.  The other thing they did to the dog was to start the countdown for the Estes rockets.  Ten!  Nine!  Eight!  Fang hated these rockets, and when the countdown began, it would bark and run around in circles.  Fang seemed to spend half its life running around in circles with peanut-butter breath and woofing like something insane."

          — Paul Watkins, "Stand Before Your God"
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saltine

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Re: Random Excerpt
« Reply #2 on: March 13, 2009, 05:58:12 AM »
From Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian:

All to the north the rain had dragged black tendrils down from the thunderclouds like tracings of lampblack fallen in a beaker and in the night they could hear the drum of rain miles away on the prairie. They ascended through a rocky pass and lightning shaped out the distant shivering mountains and lightning rang the stones about and tufts of blue fire clung to the horses like incandescent elementals that would not be driven off. Soft smelterlight advanced upon the metal of the harness, light ran blue and liquid on the barrels of the guns. Mad jackhares started and checked in the blue glare and high among those clanging crags joking roehawks crouched in their feathers or cracked a yellow eye at the thunder underfoot.
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Junior

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Re: Random Excerpt
« Reply #3 on: March 26, 2009, 09:16:07 PM »
This is my favorite bit of writing so far from As I Lay Dying:

Quote from: Dewey Dell
And so it was because I could not help it. It was then, and then I saw Darl and he knew. He said he knew without the words like he told me that ma is going to die without words, and I knew he knew because if he had said he knew with the words I would not have believed that he had been there and saw us. But he said he did know and I said "Are you going to tell pa are you going to kill him?" without the words I said it and he said "Why?" without the words. And that's why I can talk to him with knowing with hating because he knows.
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roujin

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Re: Random Excerpt
« Reply #4 on: April 05, 2009, 06:48:40 PM »
Törless couldn't think; he saw . . . All of a sudden he saw a mad swirl of events behind his closed eyes . . . People; people harshly lit, lights and deep-etched, agitated shadows; faces . . . a face; a smile . . . an opening eye . . . a quivering of the skin; he saw people as he had never seen them before, never felt about them before: but he saw them without seeing, without thoughts, without images; as though his soul alone could see them; they were so distinct that he was pierced through by their intensity, but, as though coming to a halt at a threshold that they could not cross, they retreated as soon as he sought words to get them under control.

from The Confusions of Young Törless by Robert Musil

pixote

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Re: Random Excerpt
« Reply #5 on: April 05, 2009, 06:52:33 PM »
That sounds better than the movie.

pixote
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roujin

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Re: Random Excerpt
« Reply #6 on: April 05, 2009, 08:08:45 PM »
ha, probably.

jbissell

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Re: Random Excerpt
« Reply #7 on: April 12, 2009, 07:40:17 PM »
I had never realized before how quickly men deteriorate without razors and clean shirts.  They are like potted plants that go to weed unless they are pruned and tended daily.  A single day's growth of beard makes a man look careless; two days', derelict; and four days', polluted.

          — Beryl Markham, "West with the Night"



Sounds about right.

saltine

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Re: Random Excerpt
« Reply #8 on: April 12, 2009, 08:08:32 PM »
I had never realized before how quickly men deteriorate without razors and clean shirts.  They are like potted plants that go to weed unless they are pruned and tended daily.  A single day's growth of beard makes a man look careless; two days', derelict; and four days', polluted.

          — Beryl Markham, "West with the Night"



Sounds about right.


Every word of that book is beautiful prose. 
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jbissell

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Re: Random Excerpt
« Reply #9 on: April 12, 2009, 09:18:57 PM »
I had never realized before how quickly men deteriorate without razors and clean shirts.  They are like potted plants that go to weed unless they are pruned and tended daily.  A single day's growth of beard makes a man look careless; two days', derelict; and four days', polluted.

          — Beryl Markham, "West with the Night"



Sounds about right.


Every word of that book is beautiful prose. 

After months and months, I'm actually almost done with it.