Wednesday, July 24, 2019

Blogging Challenge: Quotes from Books

Right, so, the usual bit of context: Weekly Blogging Challenge over at Long and Short Reviews. Hit their homepage to see the current week's responses, and add a link to your own if you're so inclined.

This week's challenge is My Favorite Quotes From Books, so let's get started. Off the top of my head, I get:

"Things fall apart; the center cannot hold; but what the hell, it's home."
This one's Roger Zelazny playing off W.B. Yeats. It's from one of the later Amber novels -- Knight of Shadows or Prince of Chaos, I think -- but I honestly can't remember which one.

"Everything will be fine. Nothing but good times ahead."
Jennifer Crusie, from Welcome to Temptation. This is a quote that I use in conversation myself, sometimes substituting "onwards and upwards" for "everything will be fine".

"Pain shared is diminished; joy shared in increased."
Spider Robinson, from The Callahan Chronicles. It's stated explicitly in several of the stories, but it's really kind of an ongoing theme for all of them.

Then there's the entire opening paragraph of All Systems Red, the first book (well, novella) in the Murderbot Diaries:
"I could have become a mass murderer after I hacked my governor module, but then I realized I could access the combined feed of entertainment channels carried on the company satellites. It had been well over 35,000 hours or so since then, with still not much murdering, but probably, I don’t know, a little under 35,000 hours of movies, serials, books, plays, and music consumed. As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure." I just... I can't help but marvel. It sets up the whole character, and the whole book, so well.

Those are the first three that come to my mind. What are yours?

13 comments:

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