Real life, life at last laid bare and illuminated—the only life in consequence which can be said to be really lived—is literature.
-Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
Quotes
All the Best Excerpts from The 100 Greatest Books of All Time
The end is nigh, my friends. The 100 Greatest Books Challenge is drawing to a close. But you know I’d never abandon you without saying good-bye—not even if we were out clubbing and Hugh Jackman was like, “Hey, girl…” Not even if I had a plane to catch on my way to my own elopement. Not even if the Apocalypse came, and I had the only fallout shelter.
Because, well, you know. I’m not a monster.
I’ll save my final send-off for another post, if only to keep a loose lid on word count. But in the meantime, here are all the best excerpts from The 100 Greatest Books of All Time. Every one of these quotes has stuck with me for one reason or another, for better or for worse. They are among the finest literary encounters I’ve ever made. And if I could fall in love with a word or a sentence, these would be my soul mates.
Let me introduce you:
Long ago, I learned how to be brave, how to go forward always.
-Homer, The Iliad
…
“Do you know—I hardly remembered you?”
“Hardly remembered me?”
“I mean: how shall I explain? I—it’s always so. Each time you happen to me all over again.”
-Edith Wharton, The Age of Innocence
…
As the years passed, she replied only: “I’m going away from here.” And it hung, this determination, like a heavy jewel between her breasts; it was written in fire on the dark sky of her mind.
-James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain
…
I am writing a curse, yet I adore you! I hear it in my heart. One string is left, and it sings.
-Fyodor Dostoevsky, The Brothers Karamazov
…
I don’t want every one to like me; I should think less of myself if some people did.
-Henry James, The Portrait of a Lady
…
With thee it was not as with many that will and would and wait and never do.
-James Joyce, Ulysses
…
“I’m afraid.”
“That’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Major Major counseled him kindly. “We’re all afraid.”
“I’m not ashamed,” Yossarian said. “I’m just afraid.”
-Joseph Heller, Catch-22
…
There are years that ask questions and years that answer.
-Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
…
Who then may trust the dice, at Fortune’s throw?
-Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales
…
Her heart of compressed ash, which had resisted the most telling blows of daily reality without strain, fell apart with the first waves of nostalgia.
-Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
…
I saw within Its depth how It conceives
all things in a single volume bound by Love
of which the universe is the scattered leaves.
-Dante Alighieri, The Paradiso
…
And they beat. The women for having known them and no more, no more; the children for having been them but never again. They killed a boss so often and so completely they had to bring him back to life to pulp him one more time. Tasting hot mealcake among pine trees, they beat it away. Singing love songs to Mr. Death, they smashed his head. More than the rest, they killed the flirt whom folks called Life for leading them on.
-Toni Morrison, Beloved
…
I waited not for light but for that doom which we call female victory which is: endure and then endure, without rhyme or reason or hope of reward—and then endure.
-William Faulkner, Absalom, Absalom!
…
Let me say before I go that I forgive nobody. I wish them all an atrocious life and then the fires and ice of hell.
-Samuel Beckett, Malone Dies
…
My theme is memory, that winged host that soared about me one grey morning of war-time. These memories, which are my life — for we possess nothing certainly except the past — were always with me.
-Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited
…
As I made my way home, I thought Jem and I would get grown but there wasn’t much else for us to learn, except possibly algebra.
-Harper Lee, To Kill A Mockingbird
…
I was a-trembling, because I’d got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it.
-Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
…
Life is strewn with these miracles for which people who love can always hope.
-Marcel Proust, In Search of Lost Time
…
And, finally,
Indulge your imagination in every possible flight.
-Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice
…
Happy quoting. And happy reading!
Quote of the Week
I was trying to feel some kind of a good-by… I don’t care if it’s a sad good-by or a bad good-by, but when I leave a place, I like to know I’m leaving it.
-J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Quote of the Week
It’s best not to flaunt the fact that the Devil is paying all your bills.
-Thomas Mann, The Magic Mountain
Quote of the Week
“Whut you gwine do ef hit rain?”
“Git wet, I reckon,” Frony said. “I aint never stopped no rain yit.”
-William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
Quote of the Week
The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause, while the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one.
-J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Quote of the Week
Like the pulse of a perfect heart, life struck straight through the streets.
-Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway
Quote of the Week
But his flawed heart—
Alack, too weak the conflict to support—
’Twixt two extremes of passion, joy and grief
Burst smilingly.
-William Shakespeare, King Lear
Quote of the Week
“Well, never mind what done it,” said the mole, forgetting his grammar in his pain. “It hurts just the same, whatever done it.”
-Kenneth Grahame, The Wind in the Willows
My Favorite “Texts from Jane Eyre” Excerpts
…
Brought to you by Mallory Ortberg—and also my mom, who bought me her book last month:
Achilles
we were just wondering
when you might be thinking
of coming back to the war that we’re having
well A of all youre being condecending
what did I say?
it wasnt what you said it was HOW you said it
and B of all i quit war forever
so
that’s when i’m coming back
whenever i un-forever quit war, which is never, so never
what’s this about, buddy?
he took that girl i liked
who did
that guy
I can’t say his name
the guy with the long name and the sun helmet
Agamemnon?
yeah that guy
he took that girl I like
which girl?
I DONT REMEMBER
GOD
what is this
name remembering day
the one who was always holding the wine
or like the orb or whatever
she was always carrying something
okay
okay
would it help if we got her back?
no
it would not help
and youre being condescending again
and im going home
what will you do if you go home?
i dunno
stuff grows out of the ground if you put stuff in it
so maybe ill do that
farming?
yeah
go home and put stuff in the ground and no one will take the girls i like
and i hope you all die in this stupid war
you don’t mean that
you don’t mean your face
what?
leave me alone
…
Wuthering Heights
god i love you cathy
i love you too
i love you so much
god
it hurts how much i love you
i love you so much
let’s break each other’s hearts
oh my god let’s
i love you so much i’m going to marry edgar
i love you so much i’m going to run away
i love you so much i’m going to make myself sick
good
good that’s so much love
i love you so much i’m going to get sick again
just out of spite
i’ll forget how to breathe
i’ll be your slave
i’ll pinch your heart and hand it back to you dead
i’ll lie down with my soul already in its grave
i’ll damn myself with your tears
i love you so much i’ll come back and marry your sister-in-law
god yes
and i’ll bankroll your brother’s alcoholism
i always hoped you would
[…]
i love you SO MUCH
i’m going to write your name all over my books and then
i’m going to have someone else’s baby and then DIE
yes
cathy yes that’s perfect
i’m going to kidnap your daughter someday
and i won’t let your nephew learn how to read
because of how much i love you
and scream at your grave
and i’ll rent your room out
to some guy from London
oh my god thank you
…
Just in case you haven’t had your fill of snark, check out my own reviews of The Iliad and Wuthering Heights.
Happy reading!
The 100 Greatest Books Challenge 