Passages that give you literary pleasure

[Old-Growth]

King Lear, Act IV, scene iv. Also the "God's spies" speech to Cordelia after they are captured. And at least another dozen speeches in the plays.

[Happy Ent]

James Joyce, Ulysseus, XIII (Nausicca)

And Jacky Caffrey shouted to look, there was another and she leaned back and the garters were blue to match on account of the transparent and they all saw it and shouted to look, look there it was and she leaned back ever so far to see the fireworks and something queer was flying about through the air, a soft thing to and fro, dark. And she saw a long Roman candle going up over the trees up, up, and, in the tense hush, they were all breathless with excitement as it went higher and higher and she had to lean back more and more to look up after it, high, high, almost out of sight, and her face was suffused with a divine, an entrancing blush from straining back and he could see her other things too, nainsook knickers, the fabric that caresses the skin, better than those other pettiwidth, the green, four and eleven, on account of being white and she let him and she saw that he saw and then it went so high it went out of sight a moment and she was trembling in every limb from being bent so far back he had a full view high up above her knee no-one ever not even on the swing or wading and she wasn't ashamed and he wasn't either to look in that immodest way like that because he couldn't resist the sight of the wondrous revealment half offered like those skirt-dancers behaving so immodest before gentlemen looking and he kept on looking, looking. She would fain have cried to him chokingly, held out her snowy slender arms to him to come, to feel his lips laid on her white brow the cry of a young girl's love, a little strangled cry, wrung from her, that cry that has rung through the ages. And then a rocket sprang and bang shot blind and O! then the Roman candle burst and it was like a sigh of O! and everyone cried O!O! in raptures and it gushed out of it a stream of rain gold hair threads and they shed and ah! they were all greeny dewy stars falling with golden, O so lively! O so soft, sweet, soft!

[Mr. E]

Is this a dagger which I see before me,

The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee.

I have thee not, and yet I see thee still.

Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible

To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but

A dagger of the mind, a false creation,

Proceeding from the heat-oppressèd brain?

I see thee yet, in form as palpable

As this which now I draw.

Thou marshall’st me the way that I was going,

And such an instrument I was to use.

Mine eyes are made the fools o' th' other senses,

Or else worth all the rest. I see thee still,

And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood,

Which was not so before. There’s no such thing.

It is the bloody business which informs

Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one half-world

Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse

The curtained sleep. Witchcraft celebrates

Pale Hecate’s offerings, and withered murder,

Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf,

Whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace,

With Tarquin’s ravishing strides, towards his design

Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth,

Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear

Thy very stones prate of my whereabout,

And take the present horror from the time,

Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives.

Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives

[Theda Baratheon]

Here and there some speck of a planet dominated by some half-awake intelligence like humanity. And here and there on such planets, one or two poor little spirits waking up and wondering what in the hell everything was for, what it was all about, what they could make of themselves; and glimpsing in a muddled way what their potentiality was, and feebly trying to express it, but always failing, always missing fire, and very often feeling themselves breaking up, as he himself was doing. Just now and then they might find the real thing, in some creative work, or in sweet community with another little spirit, or with others. Just now and then they seemed somehow to create or to be gathered up into something lovelier than their individual selves, something which demanded their selves’ sacrifice and yet gave their selves new life. But how precariously, torturingly; and only just for a flicker of time! Their whole life-time would only be a flicker in the whole of titanic time. Even when all the worlds have frozen or exploded, and all the suns gone dead and cold, they’ll still be time. Oh, God, what for?

---- Sirius, Olaf Stapledon

[Sci-2]

Tsungali walked in and smelt himself there years before, the rush of memories filling the hollows of his previous nervous system. For so it is among those who shed lives every few years: they keep their deflated interior causeways, hold them running parallel with their current useable ones; ghost arteries, sleeping shrunken next to those that pump life. Hushed lymphatics, like quiet ivy alongside the speeding juice of now. Nerve trees like bone coral, hugging the whisper of bellowing communications. That old part of him swelled with an essence of himself before, nudging the now in a physical déjà vu, becoming two in the stiff interior of his body, ignoring the even stiffer officer who glared in his direction.

The overhead fan waded in the congealed air, stirring heartbeats of a larger beast and giving rhythm to the mosquitoes queuing to taste the sweating white skin of the officer, who choked out, ‘You have been asked to come here’ – the claws of the word ‘asked’ scratched the inside of his throat – ‘for a very special purpose.’

Night and insects.

‘We are looking for someone to hunt a man, someone we can trust.’

Catling, B. (2013-01-08). The Vorrh (p. 27). Honest Publishing. Kindle Edition.

[Darth Richard]

So, yeah, that Shakespeare guy was pretty good.

[First of My Name]

This passage is from the novel of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. I know, Star Wars, but I found this pretty chilling when I first read it. (Anakin Skywalker has just killed his wife and revcieved the lava burns, he's now just been fitted into the Darth Vader suit:

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker, forever:

The first dawn of light in your universe brings pain.

The light burns you. It will always burn you. Part of you will always lie upon black glass sand beside a lake of fire while flames chew at your flesh.

You can hear yourself breathing. It comes hard, and harsh, and it scrapes nerves already raw, but you cannot stop it. You can never stop it. You cannot even slow it down.

You don’t even have lungs anymore.

Mechanisms hardwired into your chest breathe for you. They will pump oxygen into your bloodstream forever.

Lord Vader? Lord Vader, can you hear me?

And you can’t, not in the way you once did. Sensors in the shell that prisons your head trickle meaning directly into your brain.

You open your scorched-pale eyes; optical sensors integrate light and shadow into a hideous simulacrum of the world around you.

Or perhaps the simulacrum is perfect, and it is the world that is hideous.

Padme? Are you here? Are you all right? you try to say, but another voice speaks for you, out from the vocabulator that serves you for burned-away lips and tongue and throat.

“Padme? Are you here? Are you all right?”

I’m very sorry, Lord Vader. I’m afraid she died. It seems in your anger, you killed her.

This burns hotter than the lava had.

“No…no, it is not possible!”

You love her. You have always loved her. You could never will her death.

Never.

But you remember…

You remember all of it.

You remember the dragon that you brought Vader forth from your heart to slay. You remember the cold venom in Vader’s blood. You remember the furnace of Vader’s fury, and the black hatred of seizing her throat to silence her lying mouth…

And there is one blazing moment in which you finally understand that there was no dragon. That there was no Vader. That there was only you. Only Anakin Skywalker.

That it was all you. Is you.

Only you.

You did it.

You killed her.

You killed her because, finally, when you could have saved her, when you could have gone away with her, when you could have been thinking about her, you were thinking about yourself…

It is in this blazing moment that you finally understand the trap of the dark side, the final cruelty of the Sith-

Because now your self is all you will ever have.

And you rage and scream and reach through the Force to crush the shadow who has destroyed you, but you are so far less now than what you were, you are more than half machine, you are like a painter gone blind, a composer gone deaf, you can remember where the power was but the power you can touch is only a memory, and so with all your world-destroying fury it is only droids around you that implode, and equipment, and the table on which you were strapped shatters, and in the end, you cannot touch the shadow.

In the end, you do not even want to.

In the end, the shadow is all you have left.

Because the shadow understands you, the shadow forgives you, the shadow gathers you unto itself-

And within your furnace heart, you burn in your own flame.

This is how it feels to be Anakin Skywalker.

Forever…

[Sci-2]

This passage is from the novel of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. I know, Star Wars, but I found this pretty chilling when I first read it.

IIRC this was written by Matt Stover, who is one of the best fantasy writers out there. If you like his SW stuff check out his Caine novels.

At minimum, get Heroes Die and Blade of Tyshalle.

[JonArryn]

Covenant's and Foamfollower's conversation ln the boat when they first met in Lord Fouls Bane.

Even though I read the translated versions, the first chronicles was very well-written imo.

Here is the passage:

Foamfollower's question caught him wandering. "Are you a storyteller, Thomas Covenant?"

Absently, he replied, "I was, once."

"And you gave it up? Ah, that is as sad a tale in three words as any you might have told me. But a life without a tale is like a sea without salt. How do you live?"

"I live."

"Another?" Foamfollower returned. "In two words, a story sadder than the first. Say no more—with one word you will make me weep."

[First of My Name]

IIRC this was written by Matt Stover, who is one of the best fantasy writers out there. If you like his SW stuff check out his Caine novels.

At minimum, get Heroes Die and Blade of Tyshalle.

I am debating whether to read Heroes Die, I just might. Sadly Tyshalle is nowhere to be found in Holland... And this is indeed by Matthew Stover, I love his books and writing style.

[AndrewBaelish]

Stover is an amazing writer. I was going to post that exact passage before I saw that you had. I did not know he wrote fantasy. I must find these books now.

[banjax451]

The opening section of Chapter 1 of Eric Garcia's Anonymous Rex hit me over the head and left me for dead. Possibly the funniest thing I had ever read up to that time. From the opening line:

"No doubt about it, I've been hitting the basil hard tonight."

To the closing line of the section:

"It is a lovely night out. I choose to walk home. Maybe I will be mugged."

I knew I was going to love the book from that point on. A somewhat strange premise that just exploded off the page for me and is burned into my brain forever. Please, Mr. Garcia...please write a fourth book and stop messing around with Hollywood...

[Sci-2]

"How else could one encompass and explain the terrible grace of the Hull Peoples, who lived within the caves hewn by a waterfall, and who, when dispossessed by Dradin and sent to the missionary fort, complained of the silence, the silence of God, how God would not talk to them, for what else was the play of water upon the rocks but the voice of God? He had had to send them back to their waterfall, for he could not bear the haunted looks upon their faces, the disorientation blossoming in their eyes like a deadly and deadening flower."

-J.Vandermeer, City of Saints and Madmen

"As a child she spent summers on her grandparent's farm. She used to sleep outside, smelling clover, grass, and the thick earth as she stared up at the sky. She would ride her horse over the lush green countryside. Much to her grandfather's bewilderment, she had also tried to save mice from the half-feral farm cats...

The more she watched them as they spoke to each other, the more she began to understand the nuances of their speech. Once or twice, she lay on the floor and covered her arms with bits of cracker and seeds. The bristly feel of their whiskers, the softness of their noses, the delicate touch of their paws - all of this helped her to understand them."

-A Confusion of Tongues Secret Life, Jeff Vandermeeer

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[The Killer Snark]

Pretty much most passages in Mervyn Peake, and Frank Herbert at his best. Oh, and the final passages of Olaf Stapledon's Star maker and Last and First Men.

[Theda Baratheon]

Pretty much most passages in Mervyn Peake, and Frank Herbert at his best. Oh, and the final passages of Olaf Stapledon's Star maker and Last and First Men.

Yessssssss, definitely

[snake]

But even as Nienna mourned, there came messengers from Formenos, and they were Noldor and bore new tidings of evil. For they told how a blind Darkness came northward, and in the midst walked some power for which there was no name, and the Darkness issued from it. But Melkor also was there, and he came to the house of Fëanor, and there he slew Finwë King of the Noldor before his doors, and spilled the first blood n the Blessed Realm, for Finwë alone had not fled from the horror of the Dark. And they told that Melkor had broken the stronghold of Formenos, and taken all the jewels of the Noldor that were hoarded in that place, and the Silmarils were gone.

Then Fëanor rose, and lifting up his hand before Manwë he cursed Melkor, naming him Morgoth, the Black Foe of the World; and by that name only was he known to the Eldar ever after. And he cursed also the summons of Manwë and the hour in which he came to Taniquetil, thinking in the madness of his rage and grief that had he been at Formenos his strength would have availed more than to be slain also, as Melkor had purposed. Then Fëanor ran from the Ring of Doom, and fled into the night; for his father was dearer to him than the Light of Valinor or the peerless works of his hands; and who among sons, of Elves or Men, have held their fathers of greater worth? Many there grieved for the anguish of Fëanor, but his loss was not his alone...

This passage has stuck with me over the years. Especially the bolded part.

[Sci-2]

"In Raissa, life is not happy. People wring their hands as the walk in

the streets, curse the crying children, lean on the railings over the

river and press their fists to their temples. In the morning you wake

from one bad dream and another begins. At the workbenches where, every

moment, you hit your finger with a hammer or prick it with a needle,

or over the columns of figures all awry in the ledgers of merchants

and bankers, or at the rows of empty glasses on the zinc counters of

the wine shops, the bent heads at least conceal the general grim gaze.

Inside the houses it is worse, and you do not have to enter to learn

this: in the summer windows resound with quarrels and broken dishes.

And yet, in Raissa, at every moment there is a child in a window who

laughs seeing a dog that has jumped on a shed to bite into a piece of

polenta dropped by a stonemason who has shouted from the top of the

scaffolding, "Darling, let me dip into it," to a young serving-maid

who holds up a dish of ragout under the pergola, happy to serve it to

the umbrella-maker who is celebrating a successful transaction, a

white lace parasol bought to display at the races by a great lady in

love with an officer who has smiled at her taking the last jump, happy

man, and still happier his horse, flying over the obstacles, seeing a

francolin flying in the sky, happy bird freed from its cage by a

painter happy at having painted it feather by feather, speckled with

red and yellow in the illumination of that page in the volume where

the philosopher says: "Also in Raissa, city of sadness, there runs an

invisible thread that binds one living being to another for a moment,

then unravels, then is stretched again between moving points as it

draws new and rapid patterns so that at every second the unhappy city

contains a happy city unaware of its own existence."

-italo calvino, invisible cities

[Mr. E]

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong in the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.

--A Farewell to Arms

[thecryptile]

I like the exchange between Hurin and Morgoth in Children of Hurin. The idea that Hurin is looking this powerful god of evil in the face, but still has the courage to talk back to him!

"I know not," said Hurin. "Yet so it might be, if they willed. For the Elder King shall not be dethroned while Arda endures."

"You say it," said Morgoth. "I am the Elder King: Melkor, first and mightiest of the Valar, who was before the world, and made it. The shadow of my purpose lies upon Arda, and all that is in it bends slowly and surely to my will. But upon all whom you love my thought shall weigh as a cloud of doom, and it shall bring them down into darkness and despair. Wherever they go, evil shall arise. Whenever they speak, their words shall bring ill counsel. Whatsoever they do shall turn against them. They shall die without hope, cursing both life and death."

But Hurin answered: "Do you forget to whom you speak? Such things you spoke long ago to our fathers; but we escaped from your shadow. And now we have knowledge of you, for we have looked on faces that have seen the Light, and heard the voices that have spoken with Manwe. Before Arda you were, but others also; and you did not make it. Neither are you the most mighty, for you have spent your strength upon yourself and wasted it in your own emptiness. No more are you now than an escaped thrall of the Valar, and their chain still awaits you."

[Sci-2]

"If she licks the wallpaper, will anyone notice?

The taste of Mrs. Wull’s wallpaper has been a long-standing question in Rosa’s mind. It’s the vibrant red of prickly pear preserves, striped with veins of minty green. When she was small, she imagined it tasting like figs crossed with raspberries, sweet and sappy and juicy-tart all at the same time. Now that she’s older and supposedly wiser, she knows that wallpaper, no matter how colorful or tempting, is just wallpaper, dust-flavored and dry as a moth’s wing rasping across your disappointed tongue. Saint Nicholas isn’t real, true love is a lie, and the only thing that won’t let you down in the world is its ability to let you down. The past few weeks have been, if nothing else, something of a learning experience in that regard.

Rosa knows all of this, but it doesn’t stop the stubborn five-year-old part of her from wanting to try. Feeling a little ridiculous, she sidles over to a corner, extends the tip of her tongue, and gives the wallpaper a tentative swipe. She braces for the bitterness of boiled glue, the chemical tang of several generations of mothballs and kerosene smoke. She prepares for life’s bad taste in her mouth, inevitable as wrinkles or scorpions in the kitchen..."

-Her Words Like Hunting Vixens Spring