Monday, December 21, 2009

Grab-A-Line Monday


This is what Grab-A-Line Monday is.

Last week, not only did I get some excellent quotes, I also received a most appreciated validation from fellow writers. What would I do without my author-community?

Tricia grabbed some lines from THE LAST UNICORN by Peter S. Beagle:


Then the Lady Amalthea smiled at him for the first time since she had come to stay in King Haggard's castle. It was a small smile, like the new moon, a slender bend of brightness on the edge of the unseen, but Prince Lir leaned toward it to be warm. He would have cupped his hands around her smile and breathed it brighter, if he had dared.

And MG Higgins grabbed her lines from the YA novel WHAT I SAW AND HOW I LIED by Judy Blundell:

Why did the air here smell like a pocketful of promises? It was the flowers and the ocean and the sky all mixed in together.

This week I was taken by this passage, which describes in such vivid details the noise in a city I almost felt I was there. It is from the 2009 National Book Award winner LET THE GREAT WORLD SPIN by Colum McCann


The thrum of the subway. The M22 bus pulled up against the sidewalk, braked, sighed down into a pot hole. A flying chocolate wrapper touched against a fire hydrant. Taxi doors slammed. Bits of trash sparred in the dankest reaches of the alleyways. Sneakers found their sweet spots. The leather of briefcases rubbed against trouserlegs. A few umbrella tips clunked against the pavement. Revolving doors pushed quarters of conversation out in to the street.

What caught you this week?

4 comments:

Bish Denham said...

Great lines. I absolutely LOVE The Last Unicorn.

Tricia J. O'Brien said...

First, I want to wish you Happy Holidays!
This week I'm reading Interworld by Neil Gaiman and Michael Reaves. The voice is a teen-age boy who finds himself able to move between other dimensions. But the book's opening line is:

Once I got lost in my own house.

MG Higgins said...

I'm reading FIRE by Kristin Cashore this week, and while I'm enjoying the book, lines aren't jumping out at me. I'll be back next Monday!

Nandini said...

Hi Yat-Yee,
Missed Grab a Line last week and came looking for it today but don't see it up. So thought I'd add my line to the old post.

This is actually from the dedication page of Haroun and the Sea of Stories.

Z emble, Zenda, Xanadu:
A ll our dream-worlds may come true.
F airy lands are fearsome too.
A s I wander far from view
R ead, and bring me home to you.

Salman Rushdie wrote it for his son while in hiding during the fallout from Satanic Verses. The acrostic spells ZAFAR, his son's name. I just found out today that he's finally writing a sequel!!

Hope you had a wonderful Christmas!