# Most memorable passages in fiction **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 29, 2006, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-memorable-passages-in-fiction/366544 "2006-07-29T15:05:00Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 16\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2006, 3:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-memorable-passages-in-fiction/366544/1 "2006-07-29T15:05:00Z")
Inspired by [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=381626). What passages from your favorite novels or short stories stick in your mind the best? Can you recite them from memory with any accuracy? I’ll try this bit fromThe Great Gatsby, moments before Gatsby is murdered, while he’s waiting for Daisy to call him to acknowledge the sacrifice he’s made in taking the blame for her killing of someone else. She never calls: [QUOTE=F. Scott Fitzgerald] Perhaps he didn’t believe it would come, and perhaps he no longer cared. If that was true, he must have felt that he lost the old warm world, paid a high price for living too long with a single dream. He must have looked up at an unfamilar sky through frightening leaves and shivered as he saw what a grotesque thing a rose is, and how raw th sunlight was on the scarcely created grass. A new world, material without being real, where poor ghosts, breathing dreams like air, drifted fortuitously about…like that ashen, fantastic figure drifting toward him through the amorphous trees. [/QUOTE] Anybody else? ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Carrot](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f0a364/32.png) [@Captain\_Carrot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Carrot)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2006, 3:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-memorable-passages-in-fiction/366544/2 "2006-07-29T15:33:07Z")
This is why we need better Required Reading in schools. I read that book a month or two ago, didn’t particularly like it, and I have absolutely no recollection of the passage you quote. Criminy, people, if you make a kid read a book for school, he’s almost certainly not going to enjoy it! I’ve reread books that I prviously enjoyed for school, and guess what: it wasn’t much fun. ---
**Author:** ![wonky](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wonky/32/393_2.png) [@wonky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wonky)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2006, 3:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-memorable-passages-in-fiction/366544/3 "2006-07-29T15:37:26Z")
The end of James Joyce’s “The Dead” sticks in my head, and yes, I can come close to reciting it. “A few light taps upon the pane made him turn to the window. It had begun to snow again. He watched sleepily the flakes, silver and dark, falling obliquely against the lamplight. The time had come for him to set out on his journey westward. Yes, the newspapers were right: snow was general all over Ireland. it was falling on every part of the dark central plain, on the treeless hills, falling softly upon the Bog of Allen and, farther westward, softly falling into the dark mutinous Shannon waves. It was falling, too, upon every part of the lonely churchyard on the hill where Michael Furey lay buried. It lay thickly drifted on the crooked crosses and headstones, on the spears of the little gate, on the barren thorns. His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” ---
**Author:** ![Alistair\_McCello](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/58956e/32.png) [@Alistair\_McCello](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alistair_McCello)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2006, 4:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-memorable-passages-in-fiction/366544/4 "2006-07-29T16:00:49Z")
Several passages come to mind, but I think the one that has stuck with me the most is from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman book **World’s End** when the narrator is describing a funeral procession. > [@Neil Gaiman](#): > > At the end of the procession, a bit behind everyone else, there were these two girls. One of them kept hesitating. She’d walk a few steps and stop. Like she’d forgotten what she was doing, where she was. Then she’d walk a little more. > > The other one… the one at the end… I think I fell in love with her, a little bit. Isn’t that dumb? But it was like I knew her. Like she was my oldest, dearest friend. The kind of person you tell anything to, no matter how bad, and they’ll still love you, because they know you. I wanted to go with her. I wanted her to notice me. > > And then she stopped walking. Under the moon, she stopped. And she looked at us. She looked at me. Maybe she was trying to tell me something; I don’t know. She probably didn’t even know I was there. But I’ll always love her. All my life. ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2006, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-memorable-passages-in-fiction/366544/5 "2006-07-29T16:10:40Z")
The ending to 1984. **He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.** ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_Door](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/50afbb/32.png) [@Bill\_Door](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_Door)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2006, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-memorable-passages-in-fiction/366544/6 "2006-07-29T17:11:28Z")
You’ll know where this comes from. > [@](#): > > Originally quoted by E. A. Poe > **And now was acknowledged the presence of the Red Death. He had come like a thief in the night. And one by one dropped the revellers in the blood-bedewed halls of their revel, and died each in the despairing posture of his fall. And the life of the ebony clock went out with that of the last of the gay. And the flames of the tripods expired. And Darkness and Decay and the Red Death held illimitable dominion over all.** ---
**Author:** ![chowder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/977dab/32.png) [@chowder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/chowder)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2006, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-memorable-passages-in-fiction/366544/7 "2006-07-29T17:15:35Z")
The end of Chapter 17, Stephen Coonts, “Liberty”. "He was going to say more, then decided against it. A liitle voice told him,Don’t take a chance. Savor this moment. Treasure it. Re-member every nuance of it so that you can keep it in your heart forever. So he reached for her hand and grasped it and sat looking into her shining eyes. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2006, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-memorable-passages-in-fiction/366544/8 "2006-07-29T17:36:57Z")
[QUOTE=Bill Door] You’ll know where this comes from. [/QUOTE] That’s just mean, dude. For anybody who doesn’t recognize it, it’s from Edgar Allen Poe’s Masque of the Red Death. ---
**Author:** ![cactus\_waltz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/74df32/32.png) [@cactus\_waltz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cactus_waltz)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2006, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-memorable-passages-in-fiction/366544/9 "2006-07-29T17:49:35Z")
[QUOTE=Mahaloth] The ending to 1984. **He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.** [/QUOTE] I found the ending to Animal farm just as powerful. ---
**Author:** ![DaveRaver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/daveraver/32/1078_2.png) [@DaveRaver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DaveRaver)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2006, 6:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-memorable-passages-in-fiction/366544/10 "2006-07-29T18:08:53Z")
“Before I could sit down in the chair she offered me, the miracle happened; one of those quiet moments that clutch the heart, and take more courage than the noisy, excited passages in life. Antonia came in and stood before me; a stalwart, brown woman, flat-chested, her curly brown hair a little grizzled. It was a shock, of course.It always is, to meet people after long years, especially if they have lived as much and as hard as this woman had.We stood looking at each other. The eyes that peered anxiously at me were–simply Antonia’s eyes. I had seen no others like them since I looked into them last, though I had looked at so many thousands of human faces. As I confronted her, the changes grew less apparent to me, her identity stronger.She was there, in the full vigour of her personality, battered but not diminished, looking at me, speaking to me in the husky, breathy voice I remembered so well.” -Willa Cather “My Antonia” ---
**Author:** ![Fretful\_Porpentine](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/fretful_porpentine/32/2873_2.png) [@Fretful\_Porpentine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fretful_Porpentine)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2006, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-memorable-passages-in-fiction/366544/11 "2006-07-29T18:23:59Z")
> [@](#): > > Ours was the marsh country, down by the river, within, as the river wound, twenty miles of the sea. My first most vivid and broad impression of the identity of things, seems to me to have been gained on a memorable raw afternoon towards evening. At such a time I found out for certain, that this bleak place overgrown with nettles was the churchyard; and that Philip Pirrip, late of this parish, and also Georgiana wife of the above, were dead and buried; and that Alexander, Bartholomew, Abraham, Tobias, and Roger, infant children of the aforesaid, were also dead and buried; and that the dark flat wilderness beyond the churchyard, intersected with dykes and mounds and gates, with scattered cattle feeding on it, was the marshes; and that the low leaden line beyond was the river; and that the distant savage lair from which the wind was rushing, was the sea; and that the small bundle of shivers growing afraid of it all and beginning to cry, was Pip. – _Great Expectations_, Chapter 1. (And no, I can’t recite it from memory.) ---
**Author:** ![Chez\_Guevara](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/aeb1de/32.png) [@Chez\_Guevara](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chez_Guevara)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2006, 6:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-memorable-passages-in-fiction/366544/12 "2006-07-29T18:36:23Z")
> [@](#): > > _Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman’s day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days - such as that day - when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft airs of centuries of youth. It was this cloistral hush which gave our laughter its resonance, and carried it still, joyously, over the intervening clamour._ Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited, _Et In Arcadia Ego._ ---
**Author:** ![Clockwork\_And\_Candy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/b782af/32.png) [@Clockwork\_And\_Candy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clockwork_And_Candy)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2006, 6:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-memorable-passages-in-fiction/366544/13 "2006-07-29T18:49:29Z")
I’ve always found these passages from **Wuthering Heights** both memorable and powerful. > [@](#): > > “You teach me now how cruel you’ve been–cruel and false. Why did you despise me? Why did you betray your own heart, Cathy? I have not one word of comfort. You deserve this. You have killed yourself. Yes, you may kiss me, and cry; and wring out my kisses and tears: they’ll blight you–they’ll damn you. You loved me–then what right had you to leave me? What right–answer me–for the poor fancy you felt for Linton? Because misery, and degradation, and death, and nothing God or satan could inflict would have parted us, you, of your own will, did it. I have not broken your heart–you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine. So much the worse for me, that I am strong. Do I want to live? What kind of living will it be when you–oh, God! would you like to live with your soul in the grave?” > [@](#): > > “Why, she’s a liar to the end! Where is she? Not there–not in heaven–not perished–where? Oh! you said you cared nothing for my sufferings! And I pray on prayer–I repeat it till my tongue stiffens–Catherine Earnshaw, may you not rest as long a I am living! You said I killed you–haunt me, then! The murdered do haunt there murderers. I believe–I know that ghosts have wandered on earth. Be with me always–take any form–drive me mad! only do not leave me in this abyss, where I cannot find you! Oh, God! it is unutterable! I cannot live without my life! I cannot live without my soul!” That book is so depressing. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Ed](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e19b73/32.png) [@Just\_Ed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Ed)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2006, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-memorable-passages-in-fiction/366544/14 "2006-07-29T21:35:57Z")
> [@](#): > > Yet Love seeketh not his own! > Dear, you may take my happiness to make you happier > Even though you never know I gave it to you. > Only let me hear sometimes, all alone, > The distant laughter of your joy! _Cyrano de Bergerac_, Edmond Rostand ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2006, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-memorable-passages-in-fiction/366544/15 "2006-07-29T21:46:50Z")
One of my favorite passages in fiction is from Heinlein’s Stranger In A Strange Land. The following exchange takes place between Jubal Harshaw and Ben Caxton, as Jubal is trying to teach Ben how to look at art. They have just be viewing a copy of Rodin’s _Carytid Fallen Under Her Stone._ \*“It’s courage, Ben and Victory.” “Victory?” “Victory in defeat, there is none higher. She didn’t give up, Ben; she’s still trying to lift that stone after it has crushed her. She’s a father working while cancer eats away his insides, to bring home one more pay check. She’s a twelve year old trying to Mother her brothers and sisters, because Mama had to go to Heaven. She’s a switchboard operator sticking to her post, while smoke chokes her and cuts off her escape. She’s all the unsung heroes who couldn’t make it but never quit.”\* Scuse me, I’ve got something in my eye. It always happens when I read that part. ---
**Author:** ![Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Skald\_the\_Rhymer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Skald_the_Rhymer)\ **Post date:** [July 29, 2006, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/most-memorable-passages-in-fiction/366544/16 "2006-07-29T22:07:58Z")
[QUOTE=Baker] One of my favorite passages in fiction is from Heinlein’s Stranger In A Strange Land. The following exchange takes place between Jubal Harshaw and Ben Caxton, as Jubal is trying to teach Ben how to look at art. They have just be viewing a copy of Rodin’s _Carytid Fallen Under Her Stone._ \*“It’s courage, Ben and Victory.” “Victory?” “Victory in defeat, there is none higher. She didn’t give up, Ben; she’s still trying to lift that stone after it has crushed her. She’s a father working while cancer eats away his insides, to bring home one more pay check. She’s a twelve year old trying to Mother her brothers and sisters, because Mama had to go to Heaven. She’s a switchboard operator sticking to her post, while smoke chokes her and cuts off her escape. She’s all the unsung heroes who couldn’t make it but never quit.”\* Scuse me, I’ve got something in my eye. It always happens when I read that part. [/QUOTE] I love that story, and that passage, and that sculpture. if I had no other reason to love Heinlein, I’d love him for introducing me to Rodin.