Notable quotes, excerpts, and profound lines.

Originally Posted by gmw

I've been meaning to put this up since I read the book last year:


-- John Green, The Fault in Our Stars (2012)

His words reminded me of Tolkien's lengthy and quite irate refutation of analogy in the foreword to LotR. Interesting to see a similar point of view expressed by a very different author, and very much more clearly and simply, too.

Originally Posted by stuartjmz

Tolkien's lengthy and quite irate refutation of analogy in the foreword to LotR.

You meant allegory?

Originally Posted by maximus83

You meant allegory?

I did indeed - I really should have learned by now to attempt to fake sentience after a ten-hour night shift.

Yep that's a valid point about Tolkien's anti-allegory stance. It's rather interesting too for him, given he was a strong Catholic believer and also a specialist in old English and literature of that period, where there was quite a bit of allegory going on! :-) At a surface level I get his point: you want to just tell a good story and not necessarily have this rigid literary and semantic structure that virtually everything in your story must have an 'inner meaning' and directly correlate to something else in real life.

In that same area of the forward, he strongly reacts to a popular view in his day, that some thought his work was some kind of allegory about the war and the fight against Nazi Germany. I guess his point was that he was not intentionally doing that at all in LOTR, it had no such 'hidden meaning' and in particular, no hidden political message. I kind of like that point--especially salient in our time--where the tendency is for everything and even art to get politicized.

From pp 6-7:

"As for any inner meaning or 'message', it has in the intention of the author none. It is neither allegorical nor topical."

[...]

"Its sources are things long before in mind, or in some cases already written, and little or nothing in it was modified by the war that began in 1939 or its sequels."

Tolkien, J.R.R. The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Second ed. Vol. 1. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1987. 3 vols.

Originally Posted by maximus83

Yep that's a valid point about Tolkien's anti-allegory stance. ...
In that same area of the forward, he strongly reacts to a popular view in his day, that some thought his work was some kind of allegory about the war and the fight against Nazi Germany.

When what it actually was was an Anglo-Saxon retelling of the Kalevala, complete with its most "noble", "perfect" language being inspired by and modelled on the language of the Kalevala

[astrangerhere]

Originally Posted by bfisher

I loved her description of living in Charles Manson-era Hollywood:
"the neighborhood was peopled mainly by rock-and-roll bands, therapy groups, very old women wheeled down the street by practical nurses in soiled uniforms, and by my husband, my daughter and me"
- Joan Didion, The White Album

I mean, I have never met a Joan Didion that I did not love, so...

[gmw]

However it was painted, the bigger picture always showed the same thing: a handful of people at the top of the tree feeding off the vulnerable below.

Jane Harper, Force of Nature (2017)

[gmw]

I couldn't decide on just one quote from this book, so...

‘Where’s that exactly?’
‘Kind of east of Perth.’

The [funeral] service was brisk and to the point, conducted by a chaplain from St Helens who at least seemed to understand that however much Cameron Bright might be missed, it didn’t make the sun any less hot.

‘Jenna took her time telling anyone.’ He turned back to Steve, surprised by the defensive note in his tone. ‘She didn’t help herself there by pretending everything was fine.’

Steve almost smiled, but caught himself.

‘What?’ Nathan demanded.

‘Just that that’s bloody rich coming from you,’ Steve said. ‘Nathan, people pretend to themselves that they are fine all the time. Every day, and for years on end. Life out here is hard. We all try to get through the best way we can. But trust me, there’s not a single person here who isn’t lying to themselves about something.’

Jane Harper, The Lost Man (2018)

[covingtoncat73]

Pete: "He's not Neville Chamberlain in that analogy. He's fascism!"

Sara: "He's 8!"

~from Outnumbered

[Larla]

"And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain"

Would that I could put together 10 words like that --

[orlok]

Originally Posted by Larla

"And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain"

Would that I could put together 10 words like that --

Um, who did put together words like that...?

[issybird]

Originally Posted by orlok

Um, who did put together words like that...?

Poe, The Raven.

[orlok]

Originally Posted by issybird

Poe, The Raven.

Shoulda known that, I guess. I’ll blame it on the fact I’m English

[gmw]

When you’re a time traveller, the people you love die, and you carry on seeing them, so their death stops making a difference to you. The only death that will ever change things is your own.

Kate Mascarenhas, The Psychology of Time Travel (2018)

[gmw]

And because I could not choose just one...

Cathy crouched so that the dog could nuzzle her hand. She still had no sense how such a thing might work, but the more time she spent with it, the less it seemed to matter. Such was the magic of an Emporium toy.

She could not remain bitter, not for long. Bitterness was a kind of privilege afforded to those in better times

‘Those two boys have been squabbling since they were young. But there was love in it back then. Tell me, Cathy, is there love in it now? Because all I see is hate …’

‘There’s love,’ said Cathy. ‘No understanding, but there’s still love.’

‘Well, that’s boys for you. All the love in the world doesn’t match a little scrap of understanding.’

Robert Dinsdale, The Toymakers (2018)