Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

[covingtoncat73]

"“He’s not a god. He’s a bully,” said Jumps. “You taught me to stand up to bullies.” “Er, not the same thing,” I said. “Bullies are people who call you names, not immortal megalomaniacs with the power to crush your soul.”
― Joanne M. Harris, The Testament of Loki

[Uncle Robin]

"Ebooks dont have the concept of pages" - K. Goyal (aka, the apple of discord)

[Dazrin]

"If ever I murdered somebody," he added quite simply, "I dare say it might be an Optimist." - Father Brown, The Three Tools of Death

[Larla]

On describing a writer: The high point of his day is the breathless excitement of waiting for the postman. (The low point is usually immediately thereafter.)
Robert A. Heinlein -- Expanded Universe

[Uncle Robin]

From Bub Bridger's Johnny Come Dancing, part of Puna Wai Kōrero, I especially liked the bolded description of NZ's remoteness:
So he walked to Lough Foyle

and he met a sea captain
one man short
to sail for New Zealand
Where’s that? asked Johnny
Is it far far away?
It’s further than that

That last couplet made me think of a song I heard long ago from a NZ band that mentioned "the tyranny of distance"

[Bookpossum]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

From Bub Bridger's Johnny Come Dancing, part of Puna Wai Kōrero, I especially liked the bolded description of NZ's remoteness:
So he walked to Lough Foyle

and he met a sea captain
one man short
to sail for New Zealand
Where’s that? asked Johnny
Is it far far away?
It’s further than that

That last couplet made me think of a song I heard long ago from a NZ band that mentioned "the tyranny of distance"

That phrase was first used by historian Geoffrey Blainey as the title of a book about the early British colonisation of Australia, which was published in the 1960s.

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by Bookpossum

That phrase was first used by historian Geoffrey Blainey as the title of a book about the early British colonisation of Australia, which was published in the 1960s.

Which phrase, "tyranny of distance"? You'll note I didn't say the song 'invented' the phrase, just that it was where I heard it. Given that NZ is 1500 miles away from Australia, it definitely does fit that little country even better than the larger one.

[gmw]

The current thread about Terry Pratchett's books reminded me I wanted to highlight two quotes...


The first one I'd already posted here 11 years ago, and it comes (if you will forgive the description, it is accurate, notice the lack of a capital letter) from his first disc-world book:

People had always dreamed of a unified world. We thought it would be a richer one. It wasn't. It meant that the Eskimo got educated and learned cost accountancy, but it didn't mean that the German learned to hunt whales with a spear. It meant everyone learned how to press buttons, and no one remembered how to dive for pearls.

-- Terry Pratchett, Strata 1981


The second comes from his penultimate Discworld book, 32 years later:

He wasn’t a philosopher and couldn’t even spell the word, but the voice of the goblin officer rang in his head. He thought, what would happen if goblins learned everything about humans and did everything the human way because they thought it was better than the goblin way? How long would it be before they were no longer goblins and left behind everything that was goblin, even their pots? The pots were lovely, he’d bought several for his mum. Goblins took pots seriously now, they sparkled, even at night, but what happens next? Will goblins really stop taking an interest in their pots and will humans learn the serious, valuable and difficult and almost magical skill of pot-making? Or will goblins become, well, just another kind of human? And which would be better?

And then he thought, maybe a policeman should stop thinking about all this because, after all, there was no crime, nothing was wrong . . . and yet in a subtle way, there was. Something was being stolen from the world without anybody noticing or caring.

-- Terry Pratchett, Raising Steam 2013

[badgoodDeb]

Lovely examples of Pratchett's depth. Ignorable if you don't care, but really meaningful if you stop to notice it.

Say ... put those over in the Pratchett thread too, will you? As further examples of style, since a few people were debating trying his books. Or perhaps a pointer, as duplicating posts is frowned upon.

[BenG]

“Wouldn't it be wonderful if I won a helicopter in a crossword puzzle competition? There is not much hope though, I am afraid, as they never give such practical prizes.”
― Leonora Carrington, The Hearing Trumpet

[Uncle Robin]

From Cree Dictionary a poem by Dallas Hunt

the Cree word for white man is unpaid child support


This line really stuck with me from my reading of Best Canadian Poetry 2019

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

From Cree Dictionary a poem by Dallas Hunt

the Cree word for white man is unpaid child support


This line really suck with me from my reading of Best Canadian Poetry 2019

As someone who works with victims of domestic violence, many of them children - this was STAGGERING. That alone might get me to buy the book.

[gmw]

From a retelling of Cinderella with a rather more realistic touch...

What clarity can an overlooked sixteen-year-old hope to have in the face of a prince’s devotions?

and

“That’s Geppetto and his son, Pinocchio.”
I studied them from where we stood. “They don’t look related,” I observed.
“They’re not really,” the princess laughed, “Pinocchio wasn’t a real child either till a short while ago.” She scrunched her nose at him. “He has a nasty habit of stomping on any bug he finds. Especially crickets.”

and my favourite line, although you really have to be reading the story for it to make sense (think fairy tales and ugly ducklings), comes from here:

The dragon smashed up the trunk with his spiked tail and the beaver escaped. Then promptly dove into a hole.
‘I only wanted to help,’ the dragon spoke to the ground. ‘On my honor as a duck.’

-- E.L. Tenenbaum, End of Ever After 2018


To be clear: while two of the quotes above are humorous, the book is not a comedy; it just has a few amusing moments that caught my fancy. On my honor as a duck.

[gmw]

“Well, like when Captain Marvel says ‘Shazam’ he turns from an ordinary guy into”—she looked at the comic on the top of the stack—“the World’s Mightiest Mortal. Captain America got shot up with some sort of secret army serum, and Superman’s super because he came from another planet. I’m not sure about Captain Midnight. But he can do nifty stuff too.”

“There are a lot of captains,” Dewey said. “Are all the heroes men?”

Suze nodded. “All the captains, yeah. Most of the others too. But there’s Wonder Woman. And Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. And Brenda Starr, but she’s boring because she’s just a reporter. Mostly she just gets rescued. Or kissed.” Suze made a face.

-- Ellen Klages, The Green Glass Sea, 2006

[gmw]

‘You don’t blame me?’ he whispered.

‘Why would I?’ She gave him a last parting squeeze, then let him go. ‘It’s better if you do it.’

-- Joe Abercrombie, Half a King, 2014