For this second post in Grab-A-Line Monday, I am offering this:
She remembered what hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way the boats below plowed the shiny water, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place new, and where she was needed.
Olive Kitteridge
by Elizabeth Strout
In case you missed last week's inaugural post, here are the quotes contributed by my wonderful cyber-pals:
"The night Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another, his mother called him, "Wild thing,"
Maurice Sendak
"I felt a haunting loneliness sometimes, and felt it in others--young clerks in the dusk, wasting the most poignant moments of night and life.
- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby, Ch. 3
There was another silence, while Marjorie considered whether or not convincing her mother was worth the trouble. People over forty can seldom be permanently convinced of anything. At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.
Having decided this, Marjorie said good night.
- Bernice Bobs Her Hair, F. Scott Fitzgerald
[Hey Tanita: just so you know, I went out and bought a short stories collection just to get to Bernice.]
Apply your heart to instruction and your ears to words of knowledge.
Proverbs 23:12
"There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name."
First line of Salman Rushdie's Haroun and the Sea of Stories.
But with this February sun, see, the light's absolutely pure and makes the colors of the sky and the tree limbs and the bricks on these suburban houses so clean that just looking at them is like inhaling purified air.
The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp
"I wish it need not have happened in my time, "says Frodo.
"So do I," says Gandalf. "And so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with that time that is given to us."
J.R.R. Tolkien
What caught you this week?
13 comments:
Yat-Yee, it's so great that you quoted Strout's book. I'm in the middle of it right now, and I'm enjoying it.
I finished it last week and I am still thinking about it. It's a wonderful book. Would love to hear what you think of it when you're done.
Sadly, I **CANNOT** seem to be able to limit myself to a single line! I'm trying, here...
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"Well, I wanted to know. Besides, you're wasting your time, anyway. I told you the gat wasn't here, only you wouldn't listen. I looked for it myself, ages ago, because I thought probably the murderer would be pretty likely to hide it amongst the bushes. Well, he didn't, and I don't think it's in the bushes on the other side of the drive either. I haven't actually combed them, but I've got a theory about it. I'll tell you what it is, if you like."
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A fifteen-year-old supersleuth from Georgette Heyer's They Found Him Dead, a mystery published in, I think, 1953. My favorite line (Of the many he ran together) was I told you the gat wasn't there, only you wouldn't listen!" which seemed to require a lot of explanation.
Tanita: don't worry about following the letter of the law. Keep them quotes coming, even if they're longer than a line! I know how it is when a line is perfect only when in context.
Ooh, I have one. I wrote it down (with a gold-ink pen, mind you) last Monday night while your post was fresh in my mind. From When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead:
"Sometimes you never feel meaner than the moment you stop feeling mean."
Another first line ... this time from Sea of Poppies by Amitav Ghosh. Not kidlit but I love all his books.
"The vision of a tall-masted ship, at sail on the ocean, came to Deeti on an otherwise ordinary day, but she knew instantly that the apparition was a sign of destiny, for she had never seen such a vessel before, not even in a dream: how could she have, living as she did in northern Bihar, four hundred miles from the coast?"
Yes, that's all one sentence.
MG and Nandini: Good ones. Thanks! Sentences can be short or they can be long, but when they are magical, they just are.
tanita,
I have to say I LOVED Georgette Heyer as a teen. Read every one of her regency series ... multiple times. Not all her mysteries though. Glad to find another Heyer aficionado!
'Certain shades of limelight wreck a girl's complexion.' - Breakfast at Tiffany's, Truman Capote.
HA! Limelight and complexion.
Oooh I dont have one off the top of my head, but I'm reading alot this week. And I love this Grab-A-Line Monday concept. I will be sure to save one to memory for next week. :)
Glad you like the idea. I look for you next week!
I love this! Reading the first line of a book often reminds me of the whole book, and the feelings I felt when reading it. That Haroun one really made me smile!
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