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Standout sentences, phrases, stanzas etc

Started by Scarlet Intangible, September 05, 2019, 09:06:26 AM

Previous topic - Next topic
I'm interested to know what bits of writing have stayed with you, that you just know by heart now?

Memorable stuff that's stuck in my head:


Shakespeare's description of an old woman - who with age and envy had grown into a hoop - in The Tempest is delightful.

Emily Dickinson in The Soul Has Bandaged Moments compares the soul (at times) to a - felon led along. It actually goes - When, felon led along(...) - but I can't remember what goes before or after. The flow of those few words is perfect though.

A poem I can't remember the name of by Emily Bronte ends with - T'was grief enough to think mankind
                                                                                                 All hollow servile insincere
                                                                                                 But worst to trust to my own mind
                                                                                                 And find the same corruption there

Plath describes a dead snake as - inert as a shoelace - in Medallion, and a man's head as - bumpy as a sack of rocks - in Insomniac. Both brilliantly vivid.

And, though it's not from a book, I love - The twisted brain-wrong of a one-off man-mental - from (I think) the Animals episode of Brass Eye.


You go now please

Twit 2

There have been a couple of threads on this before. Here the most recent, with a link to the one before that at the bottom:

https://www.cookdandbombd.co.uk/forums/index.php?topic=68894.0

Twit 2

#2
I go back to A Rebours a lot, reading it many times over the last 15 years. One of those books that ends up being nearly completely underlined due to the deluge of amazing passages.

This depiction of warfare reads like proto-Cormac McCarthy:



A description of Moreau's Salomé dansant devant Hérode:



Can't be bothered to go to the beach? Recreate the experience in a bath on the Seine:



Spot o'flower arranging:



Etc. Whole book's like that.

Pingers

In Andrew Miller's Pure he describes an empty room with a low fire in the grate and writes "A feather of smoke leaned into the room" which has stuck with me.

I'm reading Larkin at the moment and his poetry is full of exquisite phrases, I wish I could chew up and swallow the pages and have them in me for all time. There is one poem called At Grass, in which he is looking at horses in a field and wondering if they used to be race horses. "Do memories plague their ears like flies?" he asks.

Mister Six

Quote from: Pingers on September 07, 2019, 01:24:42 PM
In Andrew Miller's Pure he describes an empty room with a low fire in the grate and writes "A feather of smoke leaned into the room" which has stuck with me.

I'm reading Larkin at the moment and his poetry is full of exquisite phrases, I wish I could chew up and swallow the pages and have them in me for all time. There is one poem called At Grass, in which he is looking at horses in a field and wondering if they used to be race horses. "Do memories plague their ears like flies?" he asks.

One of my first thoughts on seeing the thread title was the bit from This be the Verse where he talks about how each generation has been "fucked up"....

QuoteBy fools in old-style hats and coats,   
Who half the time were soppy-stern
And half at one another's throats.
Lovely cadence.

Also the recent death of Terrence Dicks reminded me of one of the greatest opening sentences of any novel, from Doctor Who and the Dalek Invasion of Earth (yeah, suck it Melville). I've bolded the sentence but the par in general is great:

QuoteThrough the ruin of a city stalked the ruin of a man. His clothes were tattered and grimy, his skin blotched and diseased over wasted flesh. On his head was a gleaming metal helmet. He walked with the stiff, jerky movements of a robot—which was exactly what he had become.

From The Ginger Man (J.P. Donleavy):

Quote"God damn it, Dangerfield. I'm a hard son of a bitch but do you know I think I'd get down on my hands and knees and kiss a Jesuit's arse if it meant I could stay."
"I'll take up the collection if you do."
"Jesus, people are interested in you here."
"Foreigners."
"Even so, they shit on them in U.S. This morning I got up early and walked down Fitzwilliam Street. It was still dark. I heard a clip clop coming along and the milkman singing. It was lovely. Jesus, I don't want to go back."
"In the land of the big rich. The monstrous rich. Over there the quids."
"I feel every minute spent in U.S. is wasted."
"Now, now, a fine great place of opportunity for the young spirit such as yours, Kenneth. Maybe a bit of that unhappiness and people whoops out of the windows. But there are the odd moments of joy. May even solve your problem."
"If I can't solve it here I'll never do it there."
"How will you bear it being waved in your face. I don't think I'm exaggerating when I say the bodies over there are beautiful."
"I can wait."
"And how's Tony?"
"Makes his kids toys all day. Gets up in the morning and yells for his tea. Then he goes out and sees his accountant and places a shilling bet. Then he gets keyed up till the horse loses. And then, as he says himself, when the horse loses I go home and pick an argument with Clocklan. When I was there I tried to get Tony interested in taking the North by force. And Tony was telling me about a time when they went over the border. Everyone going to shoot a policeman, couldn't hold them back, going to declare the North under the tricolor. They get over the border, pockets filled with homemade bombs, hand grenades and gelignite. Then they meet a policeman. There are forty of them and one policeman and he comes over and says, 'ere, 'ere, this 'ere is King's land, now behave yourselves or I'll have to lock the whole lot of ye up. They all get long faces, roll up the tricolor, put away the bombs and go into the first pub and get drunk, with the policeman with them as well. It was good. Do you know I don't think they ever want to take the North. Barney says they're the finest people on the earth. Do you know perhaps the North ought to take over the South."
"At least we'd have contraceptives then, Kenneth."

Inspector Norse

I love a nice first line. I read Underworld recently, and the first six words were just such a hook.

QuoteHe speaks in your voice, American

I think the full sentence is

He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.

Larkin doesn't do much for me, but that part in This be the verse is pretty good.


Remembered a few more:

At the start of Dorian Gray a bee is 'shouldering' its way through the garden, which seems spot on and almost untoppable as a way of describing how bees move.

'Don't let the bastards grind you down', from The Handmaid's Tale.

And even though I've not read any of the books since I was a yoof, I remember James Bond's hair being described as a 'black comma'.


Quote from: Inspector Norse on September 07, 2019, 08:16:36 PM
I love a nice first line. I read Underworld recently, and the first six words were just such a hook.

I think the full sentence is

He speaks in your voice, American, and there's a shine in his eye that's halfway hopeful.

This is intriguing. Might have to get it.

chveik

"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new." Beckett (Murphy)


Dr Syntax Head

The sentence that got me reading Douglas Adams. The longest and most destructive party ever held is now into its fourth generation and still no one shows any sign of leaving. Somebody did look at his watch, but that was eleven years ago, and there as been no follow-up ... It is also one hell of a thing to get hit with in the small of the back.

non capisco

I think the funniest sentence in literature is probably the following from 'A Confederacy Of Dunces'

"My valve is screaming for appeasement!"

What a fantastic sequence of words that is. It would be pipped to the post by 'I am The Great Cornholio, you will cooperate with my bunghole!" but that's from a film, not a book.

My favourite Ignatius J. Reilly quote is "I mingle with my peers or no one, and since I have no peers, I mingle with no one."

mr. logic

Quote from: Dr Syntax Head on September 12, 2019, 11:41:22 AM
The sentence that got me reading Douglas Adams. The longest and most destructive party ever held is now into its fourth generation and still no one shows any sign of leaving. Somebody did look at his watch, but that was eleven years ago, and there as been no follow-up ... It is also one hell of a thing to get hit with in the small of the back.

Eh? Don't get this at all.

holyzombiejesus

Re-reading A Kind of Loving at the moment and liked the line "Then I decide I might spot her if I circulate a bit do I get up to dance and pick a bird who looks ok from a distance and pongs like beef gravy gone off close to." Barstow also describes another woman as having "a mouth like a crack in a pie".

Piggyoioi

"And suddenly his cock was out, jutting upward from his breeches like a fat pink mast."

George R.R. Martin, A Song of Ice and Fire: A Feast for Crows

Quote from: chveik on September 10, 2019, 02:51:28 PM
"The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new." Beckett (Murphy)

Really like this. Just looked into it and now I want it.

Twit 2

Also good is:

QuoteI tried to groan, Help! Help! But the tone that came out was that of polite conversation.

timebug

I have always remembered 'It darkles;tinct,tint' from the unreadable mess that is Finnegans Wake by James Joyce.Dunno why it just sort of resonates with me!

popcorn

A less lofty favourite:

QuoteI met the owner of Unit 2 on the stairs. He is a professor of golf course management at De Montfort University. His name is Frank Green. He said the swans were a bloody nuisance and that he was thinking of selling his apartment and moving to a land-locked location.

The series of details here is exquisite.

jobotic

Adrian Mole? There must be hundreds to chose from.

popcorn

Quote from: jobotic on October 05, 2019, 12:54:20 PM
Adrian Mole? There must be hundreds to chose from.

Yes. Forgot to mention that for I am a thicko.

Ray Travez

From The Godfather-

"He took the peppers from the pan and bread from the basket on the table and made a sloppy sandwich with hot olive oil dripping from his fingers."

Always stayed with me. Became my preferred sandwich for a long time.

Ray Travez

Quote from: TrainspottingHe actually looks a bit like Elvis, like Elvis does now; a chunky, decomposing ex-Ted.

bgmnts

Thinking about this a lot recently, and it kills me inside a bit to know this was written over 175 years ago and yet we still haven't really taken in any of it.

One of the greatest stories ever contains these two passages:

Quote`It is required of every man,' the Ghost returned, `that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!'

Quote`Business!' cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. `Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!'

Beautifully tragic.

Of course these passages were perfected by the muppets a century and a half later

holyzombiejesus

Quote from: willy crossit on November 16, 2019, 08:17:47 PM
"He was a gruff and big man and when he got from the van it lifted and relaxed like a child relieved of the momentary fear of being hit. Where he went he bought a sense of harmfulness and it was as if this was known even by the inanimate things around him. They feared him somehow."