What is your favourite quote / para from a book you have read?
This is for all the book lovers here. What is your favourite line/quote/paragraph from any book you have read. Can be fiction/non-fiction.
I started audio book of 100 years a solitude after checking out the awesome reviews. Been an avid reader since 7-8 years old, so, I don't have much difficulty in understanding.
But this particular book seemed all over the place even after 3 hours of listening to it, eventually gave up. Too many characters, so many tricky names.
Now I feel I should have rather finished it.
Haha yeah itisa taxing read. I read it the first time around without any reviews; I was bored and it was there on the study table of my roommate who was doing Bachelor's in English Literature.
So, if you don't enjoy it in audio, maybe try visual? That way you can stop wherever, go back to parts, and have a handy chart which explains the very complicated Buendia family tree :)
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
~Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
On some days, I study for 12 hours and on the others, I sit with Sylvia Plath and my existential dread to overthink :p
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
~Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
On some days, I study for 12 hours and on the others, I sit with Sylvia Plath and my existential dread to overthink :p
"...to the person in the Bell Jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is a bad dream."
This is my favourite one from the book.
I only do existential angst; no studies for me. No, Sir.
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
~Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
On some days, I study for 12 hours and on the others, I sit with Sylvia Plath and my existential dread to overthink :p
I was sad for days after finishing this book.
I have been sharing this poem with an evangelical zeal ever since I came across it. It always makes me feel better about life and the world.
It's long (sorry!), but makes me wish it were longer.
Say Yes, by Andrea Gibson
When two violins are placed in a room if a chord on one violin is struck
the other violin will sound the note
If this is your definition of hope
This is for you
The ones who know how powerful we are
Who know we can sound the music in the people around us
simply by playing our own strings
for the ones who sing life into broken wings
open their chests and offer their breath
as wind on a still day when nothing seems to be moving
Spare those intent on proving god is dead
For you when your fingers are red
from clutching your heart
so it will beat faster
For the time you mastered the art of giving yourself for the sake of someone else
For the ones who have felt what it is to crush the lies
and lift truth so high the steeples bow to the sky
This is for you
This is also for the people who wake early to watch flowers bloom
Who notice the moon at noon on a day when the world
has slapped them in the face with its lack of light
For the mothers who feed their children first
and thirst for nothing when they’re full
This is for women
And for the men who taught me only women bleed with the moon
but there are men who cry when women bleed
men who bleed from women’s wounds
and this is for that moon
on the nights she seems hung by a noose
For the people who cut her loose
and for the people still waiting for the rope to burn
about to learn they have scissors in their hands
This is for the man who showed me
the hardest thing about having nothing
is having nothing to give
Who said the only reason to live is to give ourselves away
So this is for the day we’ll quit or jobs and work for something real
We’ll feel for sunshine in the shadows
look for sunrays in the shade
This is for the people who rattle the cage that slave wage built
and for the ones who didn’t know the filth until tonight
But right now are beginning songs that sound something like
people turning their porch lights on and calling the homeless back home
This is for all the shit we own
and for the day we’ll learn how much we have
when we learn to give that shit away
This is for doubt becoming faith
For falling from grace and climbing back up
For trading our silver platters for something that matters
like the gold that shines from our hands when we hold each other
This is for the grandmother who walked a thousand miles on broken glass
to find that single patch of grass to plant a family tree
where the fruit would grow to laugh
For the ones who know the math of war
has always been subtraction
so they live like an action of addition
For you when you give like every star is wishing on you
and for the people still wishing on stars
this is for you too
This is for the times you went through hell so someone else wouldn’t have to
For the time you taught a 14 year old girl she was powerful
This is for the time you taught a 14 year old boy he was beautiful
For the radical anarchist asking a republican to dance
cause what’s the chance of everyone moving from right to left
if the only moves they see are NBC and CBS
This is for the no becoming yes
For scars becoming breath
For saying I love you to people who will never say it to us
For scraping away the rust and remembering how to shine
For the dime you gave away when you didn’t have a penny
For the many beautiful things we do
For every song we’ve ever sung
For refusing to believe in miracles
because miracles are the impossible coming true
and everything is possible
This is for the possibility that guides us
and for the possibilities still waiting to sing
and spread their wings inside us
‘Cause tonight saturn is on his knees
proposing with all of his ten thousand rings
that whatever song we’ve been singing we sing even more
The world needs us right now more than it ever has before
Pull all your strings
Play every chord
If you’re writing letters to the prisoners
start tearing down the bars
If you’re handing our flashlights in the dark
start handing our stars
Never go a second hushing the percussion of your heart
Play loud
Play like you know the clouds have left too many people cold and broken
and you’re their last chance for sun
Play like there’s no time for hoping brighter days will come
Play like the apocalypse is only 4…3…2
but you have a drum in your chest that could save us
You have a song like a breath that could raise us
like the sunrise into a dark sky that cries to be blue
Play like you know we won’t survive if you don’t
but we will if you do
Play like saturn is on his knees
proposing with all of his ten thousand rings
that we give every single breath
this is for saying–yes
This is for saying yes
Another one from this gem of a book that I read in class 10 and has stuck with me since then //
"Ask yourself: Are you spending your time on the right things?
whatonly,
For most of my adolescence and young adulthood, I fantasized about being a musician—a rock star, in particular. Any badass guitar song I heard, I would always close my eyes and envision myself up on stage, playing it to the screams of the crowd, people absolutely losing their minds to my sweet finger-noodling glory. This fantasy could keep me occupied for hours on end.
Despite my fantasizing about this for over half my lifetime, the reality never came to fruition. And it took me a long time and a lot of struggle to finally figure out why: I didn’t actually want it.
I was in love with the result—the image of me on stage, people cheering, me rocking out, pouring my heart into what I was playing—but I wasn’t in love with the process. And because of that, I failed at it. Repeatedly. Hell, I didn’t even try hard enough to fail at it. I hardly tried at all. The daily drudgery of practicing, the logistics of finding a group and rehearsing, the pain of finding gigs and actually getting people to show up and give a shit, the broken strings, the blown tube amp, hauling forty pounds of gear to and from rehearsals with no car. It’s a mountain of a dream and a mile high climb to the top. And what it took me a long time to discover is that I didn’t like to climb much. I just liked to imagine the summit.
The common cultural narratives would tell me that I somehow failed myself, that I’m a quitter or a loser, that I just didn’t “have it,” that I gave up on my dream and that maybe I let myself succumb to the pressures of society. But the truth is far less interesting than any of these explanations. The truth is, I thought I wanted something, but it turns out I didn’t. End of story.
I
wanted the reward and not the struggle.
I wanted the result and not the process.
I was in love with not the fight but
only the victory.
And life doesn’t work that way.
---The subtle art of not giving a f*ck by Mark Manson
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
~Sylvia Plath - The Bell Jar
On some days, I study for 12 hours and on the others, I sit with Sylvia Plath and my existential dread to overthink :p
This is from Mad Girl’s Love song bySylvia Plath
“ I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)”
It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know aboutlove and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in aninstant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realized,somehow, through the screaming in my mind, that even in that shackled,bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who weretorturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But inthe flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom is auniverse of possibility. And the choice you make, between hating andforgiving, can become the story of your life.
The simple and astonishing truth about India and Indian people is that when you go there, and deal with them, your heart always guides you more wisely than your head. There's nowhere else in the world where that's quite so true.
~ Shantaram
Slightly offbeat but one of my favourite part is from Rashmirathi:
(Don't know what's wrong with forum fonts)
What is wrong and what is right,
The conundrum where most of us survive.
At times we feel it's right,
While at some we think its wrong hence better to deny.
You feel I am right whereas it might be that I am suffering from inside.
It's tougher than tough to decide the, dwelling between this contrasting twin.
Both on the same plate one rewards glory while other sympathy.
Right and wrong, perhaps amongst the first to be taught,
But it takes a lifetime to unravel the thought.
When we reach glory the treaded path is treated right,
But if obscurity the same path is now all bestowed with wrongs.
At times our feelings are right for a person,
At another that person is wrong to be trusted upon.
The more you get older
The days' tend to get colder
You are old and supposedly ought to know right,
The society demands your each deeds to be right,
Wish they could also make us aware of the exact path that leads to right
At times we are certain of it to be wrong but do not know it's supplement as right.
We jostle between right and wrong.
We make all wrong plans to reach at right.
We do everything right yet reach at wrong.
We spend entire lifetime doing right,
But when end knocks we realize your existence itself was wrong.
So what is actually right?
The end must reveal the secret of wrong and right,
But its upon oneself to decide.
As the one that seems right to me might be wrong to the entire mankind;
----- by the one who posted it
Rashmirathi,whatonly
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