Don’t tell us why you love the book; SHOW us--in 100 words or less.

[Kythereia]

I think I may be cheating a little here. But I couldn’t cut any of this:

CYRANO: My nose is Gargantuan! You little Pig-snout, you tiny Monkey-Nostrils, you virtually invisible Pekinese-Puss, don’t you realize that a nose like mine is both sceptre and orb, a monument to my superiority? A great nose is the banner of a great man, a generous heart, a towering spirit, an expansive soul–such as I unmistakeably am, and such as you dare not to dream of being, with your bilious weasel’s eyes and no nose to keep them apart! With your face as lacking in all distinction–

(CYRANO slaps him lightly and the IRRITABLE TYPE cries out.)

–as lacking, I say, in interest, as lacking in pride, in imagination, in honesty, in lyricism–in a word, as lacking in nose as that other offensively bland expanse at the opposite end of your cringing spine-- (He seizes his shoulders and spins him around.) --which now I remove from my sight by stringent application of my boot! *(Kicks him towards the exit.)
*
IRRITABLE TYPE: (Running out.) Help! I’ve been outraged!

–Edmund Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@Bippy the Beardless

I just cheated, and noone has called me on it yet, so you might get away with it as well.

Bippy & Eonwe, I cameback to the thread to say that the 100-word limit was more a guideline than a rule, so feel free to go over a bit if you really want to. Let’s just nobody quote an entire chapter of LOTR, kay?

[Glassy]

I hated that man, once. … If you should learn that Gideon Johnson is the author of my difficulties, do me a great favor and pick me out a nice box. Preferably trimmed in brass, to match my manners.

Freedom and Necessity, by Steven Brust and Emma Bull. The first 100 pages of this book are among the finest I have ever read. They don’t quite sustain it to the end, but it’s worth reading and re-reading.

[Bippy_the_Beardless]

From The Madman by Gibran Khalil Gibran

THE NEW PLEASURE

Last night I invented a new pleasure, and as I was giving it the first trial an angel and a devil came rushing toward my house. They met at my door and fought with each other over my newly created pleasure; the one crying, “It is a sin!” – the other, “It is a virtue!”

[wonderlust]

@Skald the Rhymer

I think I’m in love.

::sends minions seven different varieties of pie for wonderlust to choose from, then resolves to no longer hijack own thread::

The pies were delicious, as were the menion. Please send more of each.

[elfkin477]

“I cannot get you close enough, I said to him, pitiful as a child, and never can and never will. We cannot get from anyone else the things we need to fill the endless terrible need, not to be dissolved, not so sink back into the sand, heat, broom, air, thinnest air. And so we revolve around each other and our dreams collide. It’s embarrassing that it should be so hard. Look out the window in any weather. We are a part of that glamour, drama, change and should not be ashamed.”

-I Cannot Get You Close Enough By Ellen Gilchrist

[I_Know_Nothing]

“Laws and principles are not for the times when there is no temptation; they are for such moments as this, when body and soul rise in mutiny against their rigor; stringent are they; inviolate they shall be. If at my individual convenience I might break them, what would be their worth? They have a worth, so I have always believed; and if I cannot believe it now, it is because I am insane, quite insane, with my veins running fire, and my heart beating faster than I can count its throbs. Preconceived opinions, foregone determinations, are all I have at this hour to stand by; there I plant my foot.”

From Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

[Walloon]

F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby:

He smiled understandingly—much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced—or seemed to face—the whole external world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just so far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.

[if6was9]

When I was about 15, 1977-ish, the first time I read Huck Finn, it was one of those marathon reading sessions where you just get SUCKED IN. Start at 7 in the evening, read til 4 am. I had one of those turntables with the arm. If you left the arm “uncocked” it would play an album over and over. The album was The Best of the Doobies. The side with “Black Water”. 20, 25 times I heard that song, while reading about Huck and Jim rolling down the river.

Roll Black Water
keep on rollin’
Mississippi moon won’t you keep on smilin’ on me

TO THIS DAY, I hear that song, I think of Huckleberry Finn. I read the book again, I think of that song. They are one and the same to me.

125 words, best I can do.

[thelurkinghorror]

Two that stand out in my mind:

John Fowles, The Magus, first paragraph:

I was born in 1927, the only child of middle-class parents, both English, and themselves born in the grotesquely elongated shadow, which they never rose sufficiently above history to leave, of that monstrous dwarf Queen Victoria. I was sent to a public school, I wasted two years doing my national service, I went to Oxford; and there I began to discover I was not the person I wanted to be.

Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions:

To give an idea of the maturity of my illustrations for this book, here is my picture of an asshole:

[dotchan]

From Maigo-chan’s translation of Rurouni Kenshin.

Goheh: You again. You’re probably with the girl on this “sword that protects life” thing.

Vagabond: No. A sword is a weapon. Kenjutsu is the art of killing. Whatever pretty words you use to speak of it, this is its true nature. What Miss Kaoru says are the words of one who has never dirtied her hands. An idealistic joke.

Kaoru: You . . .

Vagabond: But, I like Miss Kaoru’s idealism better than its true nature. If one can ask so much, I want the world to accept this joke as its true nature.

Captures the whole essense of the entire series right there, and one of the reasons I eventually forgave the artist for a (somewhat) forced happy ending.

[sturmhauke]

This is from the ending of A Game of Thrones by George Martin, so I’m going to put it in a spoiler box:

When the fire died at last and the ground became cool enough to walk upon, Ser Jorah Mormont found her amidst the ashes, surrounded by blackened logs and bits of glowing ember and the burnt bones of man and woman and stallion. She was naked, covered in soot, her clothes turned to ash, her beautiful hair all crisped away… yet she was unhurt.
The cream-and-gold dragon was suckling at her left breast, the green-and-bronze at her right. Her arms cradled them close. The black-and-scarlet beast was draped across her shoulders, its long sinuous neck coiled under her chin. When it saw Jorah, it raised its head and looked at him with eyes as red as coals.
Wordless, the knight fell to his knees. The men of her khas came up behind him. Jhogo was the first to lay his arakh at her feet. “Blood of my blood,” he murmured, pushing his face to the smoking earth. “Blood of my blood,” she heard Aggo echo. “Blood of my blood,” Rakharo shouted.

[mnemosyne]

Sorry, but it’s going to be in the original French, as it should be, from Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry:

Il y a des millions d’années que les fleurs fabriquent des épines. Il y a des millions d’années que les moutons mangent quand même les fleurs. Et ce n’est pas sérieux de chercher à comprendre pourquoi elles se donnent tant de mal pour se fabriquer des épines qui ne servent jamais à rien ? Ce n’est pas important la guerre des moutons et des fleurs ? Ce n’est pas plus sérieux et plus important que les additions d’un gros Monsieur rouge ? Et si je connais, moi, une fleur unique au monde, qui n’existe nulle part, sauf dans ma planète, et qu’un petit mouton peut anéantir d’un seul coup, comme ça, un matin, sans se rendre compte de ce qu’il fait, ce n’est pas important ça !

(translated by me, so sorry if it doesn’t match what you may have read:

For millions of years, flowers have made thorns. For millions of years, sheep still eat the flowers. Is it not serious to seek to understand why they give themselves so much trouble to make torns that never serve any purpose? Is it not important, the war between the sheep and the flowers? Is it not more serious and more important than the calculations of a big red man? And if I know one flower, unique in the world, that exists no where, except on my planet, and a small sheep can annihilate it in one shot, just like that, one morning, without realising what it is doing, is that not important?

[Waenara]

From Steel Beach by John Varley:

“In five year, the penis will be obsolete,” said the salesman.

He paused to let this planet-shattering information sink into our amazed brains. Personally, I didn’t know how many more wonders I could absorb before lunch.

“With the right promotional campaign,” he went on, breathlessly, “it might even take as little as two years.”

He might even have been right. Stranger things have happened in my lifetime. But I decided to hold off on calling my broker with frantic orders to sell all my jockstrap stock.

from Small Gods by Terry Pratchett (I’m cheating here, because I couldn’t choose between two different quotes, and they’re both over 100 words):

People have reality-dampers.

It is a popular fact that nine-tenths of the brain is not used and, like most popular facts, it is wrong. Not even the most stupid Creator would go to the trouble of making the human head carry around several pounds of unnecessary grey goo if its only real purpose was, for example, to serve as a delicacy for certain remote tribesmen in unexplored valleys. It is used. And one of its functions is to make the miraculous seem ordinary and turn the unusual into the usual.

Because if this was not the case, then human beings, faced with the daily wondrousness of everything, would go around wearing big stupid grins, similar to those worn by certain remote tribesmen who occasionally get raided by the authorities and have the contents of their plastic greenhousees very seriously inspected. They’d say “Wow!” a lot. And no one would do much work.

and:

People said there had to be a Supreme Being because otherwise how could the universe exist, eh?

And of course there clearly had to be, said Koomi, a Supreme Being. But since the universe was a bit of a mess, it was obvious that the Supreme Being hadn’t in fact made it. If he had made it he would, being Supreme, have made a much better job of it, with far better thought given, taking an example at random, to things like the design of the common nostril. Or, to put it another way, the existence of a badly put-together watch proved the existence of a blind watchmaker. You only had to look around to see that there was room for improvement practically everywhere.

This suggested that the Universe had probably been put together in a bit of a rush by an underling while the Supreme Being wasn’t looking, in the same way the Boy Scouts’ Association minutes are done on office photocopiers all over the country.

and from the ending of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein, spoilerized for your protection:

[spoiler] Don’t know any answers.

Wish I could ask Mike.

I wake up in night and think I’ve heard him–just a whisper: “Man… Man my best friend…” But when I say, “Mike?” he doesn’t answer. Is he wandering around somewhere, looking for hardware to hook into? Or is he buried down in Complex Under, trying to find way out? Those special memories are all in there somewhere, waiting to be stirred. But I can’t retrieve them; they were voice-coded.

Oh, he’s dead as Prof, I know it. (But how dead is Prof?) If I punched it just once more and said, “Hi, Mike!” would he answer, “Hi, Man! Heard any good ones lately?” Been a long time since I’ve risked it. But he can’t really be dead, nothing was hurt–he’s just lost.

You listening, Bog? Is a computer one of Your creatures?[/spoiler]

[Bam_Boo_Gut]

“Aroint thee” the rumpfed runion cried.

Shakespeare’s Macbeth

[Boulter_s_Canary]

Keith Roberts’ story cycle The Chalk Giants. This is the end of the first section ‘The Sun Over a Low Hill’: -
Toward dawn he was visited by a dream. First it was as if she called to him, her voice mixed with a soughing wind. Then it seemed he stood on some eminence, placed high above a rolling plain. He saw the heath and hills, then all the country; the blue-grey sea, fossil-haunted cliffs. He saw the castle and the village, small as children’s toys; and other villages and towns, and others and still more. Then white flame leaped, devouring; and when he could see again they were blotted out. Wiped clean, every one. And the sea creamed against empty beaches, the wind hissed through the grass. Her voice came again, high and mournful as a sea bird. The sound rushed out to lose itself in the vastness of the west; and the sun rose, over a low hill, bringing an empty dawn.

[Larry_Borgia]

From Lucky Jim, by Kingsley Amis. A lot of you will know this one, It’s pretty famous, but here it is anyway.

He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as loking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he’d somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.

[Smeghead]

I read this one tonight. It may be a bit over 100 words, but what the hell?

From “The Confusion” by Neal Stephenson. The speakers are Samuel Pepys (the historical figure) and Daniel Waterhouse (fictional), who both survived life-threatening bladder stones (which they now carry in their pockets) and have just enjoyed a good piss together:

“Right. Now, on your knees, Mr. Waterhouse!”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Never fear. I shall be joining you in moments…my knees being older work slower…er…ah!..owf. There. Now, let us pray.”
“You always say a prayer after you piss?”
“Only after a really first-rate one, or when communing with a fellow sufferer, as now. Lord of the Universe, Your humble servants Samuel Pepys and Daniel Waterhouse pray that You shall bless and keep the soul of the late Bishop of Chester, John Wilkins, who, wanting no further purification in the Kidney of the World, went to Your keeping twenty years since. And we give praise and thanks to You for having given us the rational faculties by which the procedure of lithotomy was invented, enabling us, who are further from perfection, to endure longer in this world, urinating freely as the occasion warrants. Let our urine-streams, gleaming and scintillating in the sun’s radiance as they pursue their parabolic trajectories earthward, be as an outward and visible sign of Your Grace, even as the knobbly stones hidden in our coat-pockets remind us that we are all earth, and that we are sinners. Do you have anything to add, Mr. Waterhouse?”
“Only, Amen!”

Brings a tear to the eye, it does. I’m off for a good pee.

[Foolonthehill]

Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Rime Of The Ancient Mariner

I took the oars: the Pilot’s boy,
Who now doth crazy go,
Laughed loud and long, and all the while
His eyes went to and fro.
“Ha! Ha!” quoth he, "full plain I see
The Devil knows how to row."

[Eutychus]

From “Ancient Lights” by Davis Grubb :

"Now. Right here. Yes. You’re touching it - this tiny flowershaped freckle between my legs, a few centimeters from my vulva, in the soft ribbon of white skin between hairline and thigh.

Straighten up now and listen well. For I am no lying wench as I warn you that, in this world as in the real one, your life will most surely depend upon your understanding what follows: the testament of my father, Sweeley Leech, who art in heaven and whose book (yes, one day you may come across a rare copy) was written, as it were, in tears of Joy run down from the cheeks of the laughing Jesus."