Write a line or passage from any book that immediately comes to mind.....okay?

Roughly paraphrased: “I’m both very happy and very sad, and I’m still trying to figure out how that can be.”

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

Stay safe.…
Please don’t kill me if you guess where that’s from.

Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow…turn this stupid, fat rat yellow!

Maybe self-improvement isn’t the answer…. Maybe self-destruction is the answer

Frightfully sorry chaps, seems I neglected to put forward my personal offering. So here it jolly well is what what!
“All his speculations & hopes are as nothing & like the archangel who aspired to omnipotence, he is chained in an eternal hell.”
I love that line, for it oozes menace.

All stretched out huge in length the arch fiend lay, chained on the burning lake. Must have been inspired by @ucme ‘s quote.

“I told you not to do that.”
;)
From my future autobiography

“Novels should be for pure personal enjoyment, I figured, not part of your work or study. That’s why I majored in history, not literature. I didn’t have any special interest in history, but once I began studying it I found it an engrossing subject.”

recently tweeted from my Kindle while reading Murakami.

(paraphrasing)

Whenever I find myself stalking through the town and ready to knock the hat off of anyone who crosses me I consider it high time to put to sea again. – my favorite line from Moby Dick (you could look it up)

Call me Ishmael.

“Context is all.”

Paraphrasing “Perhaps nothing is made. Perhaps it simply is, has been, always will be. A clock without a craftsman.”

“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.” The Alchemist, page 23, by Paulo Coelho

Polonius:
What is the matter my lord?

Hamlet:
Between who?

Polonius:
I mean the matter which you read my lord.

Hamlet:
Slanders sir! For the satirical rogue says that old men have grey beards, that their faces are wrinkled, their eyes purging thick amber and plumtree gum and that they have a plentiful lack of wit together with most weak hams. All of which, sir, though I most powerfully and potently believe, and yet I hold it not honesty to have it thus set down. For yourself sir, should be as old as I, if like a crab you could go backwards.

I mangle it after that. Until it comes to this:

[Polonius tells Hamlet that he is going to take his leave of him.]

Hamlet: You cannot take from me anything I would more willingly part withal, except my life…

That Hamlet! What a rogue. He also knows a hawk from a handsaw and assures us he could be bounded in a nutshell and count himself the king of infinite space were it not for his bad dreams. Poor guy. Denmark sucks. Just kidding Denmark, if Denmark’s a prison then is the world one.

‘How bright your garden looks!’ said Gandalf.

It’s pretty easy being all philosophical when you’re not the one with shit for blood.

In my day, lassies wore nice bright colours, instead of trying to look like vampires.

Both from Trainspotting, with the written Scottish accent removed, as I don’t quite recall offhand how it went.

All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known.
—Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

I have no idea why I thought of that. Any moment I might start reciting entire poems of Poe and passages of Shelley.

Once upon a time, a very long time ago now, about last Friday, Winnie-the-Pooh lived in a forest all by himself under the name of Sanders.

Cheers folks, good stuff.

Paraphrased: It’s amazing, that after billions of years, we’re here and able to experience consciousness. From The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins.

Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed.

Aujourd’hui maman est morte.

It was love at first sight. The first time Yossarian saw the chaplain he fell madly in love with him.

…and yes I said yes I will Yes.

Her voice is full of money.

@Jeruba : Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair.

That’s one of them, @gailcalled.

The Indian Serenade

  I arise from dreams of thee
In the first sweet sleep of night,
When the winds are breathing low,
And the stars are shining bright:
I arise from dreams of thee,
And a spirit in my feet
Hath led me—who knows how?
To thy chamber window, Sweet!

  The wandering airs they faint
On the dark, the silent stream—
The Champak odours fail
Like sweet thoughts in a dream;
The Nightingale’s complaint,
It dies upon her heart;—
As I must on thine,
O belovèd as thou art!

  O lift me from the grass!
I die! I faint! I fail!
Let thy love in kisses rain
On my lips and eyelids pale.
My cheek is cold and white, alas!
My heart beats loud and fast;—
O! press it to thine own again,
Where it will break at last.

(I always think of Schubert, too, when I read this.)

By a curious coincidence, “None at all” is exactly how much suspicion the ape-descendent Arthur Dent had that one of his closest friends was not descended from an ape, but was in fact from a small planet somewhere in the vicinity of Betelgeuse and not from Guilford as he usually claimed.

Oh, well, if we’re doing poetry (and I can’t imagine that even @Jeruba can quote that from memory), then:

i carry your heart with me, by e.e. cummings

i carry your heart with me (i carry it in
my heart) i am never without it (anywhere
i go you go, my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing, my darling)
i fear
no fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i want
no world (for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart (i carry it in my heart)

@WasCy @Jeruba

since feeling is first who pays any attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you,

wholly to be a fool while spring is in the air.

“I just beheaded and dismembered a sentient creature not twenty yards from you. That doesn’t bother you?”

Your friends will know you better in the first minute you meet than your acquaintances will know you in a thousand years. Richard Bach. Illusions: The adventures of a reluctant messiah.

It was a dark and stormy night….

Of all the girls that are so mean

There’s none like Minnie Smellie.

I’ll take away the gift I gave

And pound her into jelly.

From ‘Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm’ – I always loved this part of the book, recently re-read it as an adult and laughed at it all over again!

Officious Little Prick! – the first line from Stephan Kings “The Shining”.

‘I wish there were some words in the world that were not the words I always hear!” – Barthelme’s Snow White.

“No one would have believed in the last years of the nineteenth century that this world was being watched keenly and closely by intelligences greater than man’s” – The War of the Worlds by HG Wells

“We can make a new one with the greatest ease—as many as we like.”

My English exam was two days ago and I wrote about Brave New World. The ‘one’ referred to in that phrase, by the way, is a human being.

“I witnessed the first thrust.” Fist thing I read when I opened The Vampire Diaries to a random page. Haha.

@AshLeigh Lmao.

That reminds me of a Stephen King book, ’‘The Eyes of the Dragon’’.

Princess points to the king’s penis and asks, What is that?

It is King’s Iron, and you my dear, are the forge.

Cracks me up everytime lol.

”But as he opened the door, he almost cringed. He did not, as a rule, have guests; his rooms were therefore not entirely presentable, and the detritus of his many identities lay strewn from wall to wall. It almost made him feel self-conscious, which was both exceedingly rare and unwelcome.”

I CELEBRATE myself, and sing myself,
And what I assume you shall assume,
For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.

Song of Myself – Walt Whitman

Never whistle while you’re pissing.

@Symbeline,
ROTFLMMFAOQXZOMG.
That’s amazing. xD

@athenasgriffin Where’s that from? It looks like something I might have read, but I’m sure I haven’t.

“The greatest thing about everything being so fucked up is that there’s so much good work to do.”

@iphigeneia It is from a book called The Hidden City by Michelle West. I give it the highest recommendations.

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by [forgetting much of the list of who adores this] ... statesmen and divines. With consistency a great mind has simply nothing to do. Do you fear contradicting yourself? Then sew up your lips with pack thread. Else if you would be a man, speak to-day what to-day thinks, in words as hard as cannon balls, and tomorrow speak what tomorrow thinks, in hard words again. What? Do you fear being misunderstood? The greatest minds in history have been misunderstood. Jesus was misunderstood, Buddha and Copernicus and Luther [others are named]. To be great is to be misunderstood.

- Self Reliance by Ralph Waldo Emerson

The whole essay is eminently quotable, if I could recall it better.

@WasCy, you are right. I do have quite a few poems memorized, but that one I know only in pieces, so I looked it up.

“It’s so hard to forget pain, but it’s even harder to remember sweetness.
We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace”

“This is your life and its ending one moment at a time.”

Peace is a lie, there is only passion.
Through passion, I gain strength.
Through strength, I gain power.
Through power, I gain victory.
Through victory, my chains are broken.
The Force shall free me.

Twas brillig and the slithy toves
did gyre and gimble in the wabe.
All mimsy were the borogrove
and momeraths all outgrabe.

Beware the jabberwock my son
the jaws that bite the claws that catch
Beware the jub jub bird and shun
the frumious bandersnatch.

I wish I knew the whole thing.

That’s one of the ones I do have memorized entire. It’s not all just skylarks and ravens for me.

By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes.

Full confession: I’ve never even read Macbeth. I’ve just always loved this line.

“It was the day my grandmother exploded.”

The Crow Road by Iain Banks

“I’m important. You never realized it, but I’m important too. You be the fool, you do whatever anyone wants when they want it. You be the fool now. Bastard.”

That’s fuckin’ insectile.

The Dark Half, by Stephen King. This was said by a detective who was being explained about a Siamese twin living on some dude’s brain. I laughed for hours lol.

@Symbeline Stephen King has so many fantastic lines like that. I remember when I read Dreamcatcher, I lost a lot of interest in the story about midway through and just looked for random shit like that because that book is just ridiculous.

Chin up, chin up / Everybody loves a happy face / Wear it, share it / It’ll brighten up the darkest place / Twinkle, sparkle / Let a little sunshine in / You’ll be on the right side, looking at the bright side / Up with your chinny-chin-chin.

Charlotte’s Web

@jonsblond Oh gosh, you’ve made me remember so much now… ^-^
I love Charlotte’s Web.

@ddude1116 I liked Dreamcatcher, but I admit it’s damn confusing. Aliens in your brain or something? Also there was a reference to It in there.

Frozen bacon FTW What’s some funny Stephen King lines you remember?

From SK’s The Dome:

Two men filling in at a hospital are discussing an 84 year old female patient. One man tells the other, “She said, and I quote, ‘One of those worthless Mercier sisters broke my goddam ass.’”

The other man asks, “So is it?”
“Is it what, sensei?”
“Broken.”
“I don’t know. She won’t show it to me. She says, and I also quote, ‘I will only expose my smithyriddles to a professional eye.’”