Monday, May 14, 2012

Lines I love (Part Three)


These are the ones that stay with me long after I've read the last page -previous ones here
Some lines are not just beautiful for the author's use of language and rhythm, but also for the bang-nail-right-on-the-head wisdom which resonates for ages afterwards, rattling noisily around in your head, like a butterfly in a room full of windows.

Infinitely wise:
'Life is difficult. This is a great truth, one of the greatest truths. Once we know that life is difficult -once we truly understand and accept it - then life is no longer difficult. Because once it is accepted, the fact that life is difficult no longer matters.'
M Scott Peck, The Road Less Travelled

Insightfully melancholy:
'Dust had replaced her'
Brigid O'Connor, Message in a Power's bottle

'Later on in life, you expect a bit of a rest, don't you? You think you deserve it. I did anyway. Also, when you are young, you think you can predict the likely pains and bleaknesses that age might bring. Discovering, for example, that as the witnesses to your life diminish, there is less corroboration, and therefore less certainty, as to what you are or have been.'
Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending (Man Booker winner 2011)

Spine-chillingly atmospheric:
'So instead of acknowledging applause, I stand there unmoving while they take part in the boldest form of dissent they can manage. Silence. Which says we do not agree. We do not condone. All of this is wrong.'
Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games

On an affair:
'Gillian noticed herself taking on his (her lover's) mannerisms - the way he put a palm to his forehead when thinking or clasped his hands and rubbed them together. She felt as though he was with her, even when he wasn't. She was surprised, and oddly offended, by how logistically easy adultery was turning out to be. Damien's (her husband) apparent obliviousness angered her.'
Molly McCloskey, Protection

Wildly psychedelic:

'Frida Kahlo likes to walk in colour, but she is hard pushed on Society Street. We wander together up Sarsfield Road; 'Where is all the yellow,' she asks, 'the red?' Frida, in a floral dress and Mexican silver, draws a tidings of magpies from the sky. She sings the reds of Sarsfield Road and they bleed into veins of the town, pulsing its grey.'
Nuala Ni Chonchuir, Frida Kahlo visits Ballinasloe, from The Juno Charm.

Have you some loved ones?
(Lines, that is)





8 comments:

eileen said...

Hi Mari,
Some great lines there.I should keep a record of really good ones but not organised enough for that...

eileen said...

Hi Mari,
Some great lines there.I should keep a record of really good ones but not organised enough for that...

Debbie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Debbie said...

Hi Mari,
Some humdingers there - I especially love the wildly psychedelic. Can't think of any more just now, though the Triple Demons of Compromise have sprung to mind from The Phantom Tolbooth - one short and fat, one tall and thin and the third exactly like the other two. DX

Brigid O'Connor said...

Mari, I'm so delighted to be included in your list, thanks so much.
Some great lines there also. I am a fan of collecting lines that have influenced me too:)

Mari G said...

Eileen - glad you like my selected lines -(you even posted twice, brill, it makes my comment total look bigger -LOL) even if Julian Barnes' is one I swiped from your favourites
Debbie - I like the sound of the Triple Demons, smashing compromise there!
Brigid - good luck with Powers story, lovely line!

niamh said...

some great lines here -
I esp love Brigids and Nualas - and your road less travelled quote.
I've no favorites to bring to the table tonight:) My brain is frazzled! What comes to mind for some reason is my favorite Alice Walker poem -

WE ALONE

We alone can devalue gold
by not caring
if it falls or rises
in the marketplace.

Wherever there is gold
there is a chain, you know,
and if your chain is gold
so much the worse for you.

Feathers, shells
and sea-shaped stones
are all as rare.

This could be our revolution:
to love what is plentiful
as much as
what's scarce.

Mari G said...

Hi Niamh
Thanks so much for the gorgeous Alive Walker poem.
It's been rattling around in my mind since reading.