What's your favorite passage from a book?

Question

What's your favorite passage from a book? Please include the quote and book.

Answer 1

I've always loved these three:
"When they first kiss, there on the beach, they will kneel at the edge of the Pacific and say a prayer of thanks, sending all the stories of love inside them out in a fleet of bottles all across the oceans of the world."
~ Dangerous Angels (Baby Beebop) by Francesca Lia Block
"If Los Angeles is a woman reclining billboard model with collagen-puffed lips and silicone-inflated breasts, a woman in a magenta convertible with heart-shaped sunglasses and cotton candy hair; if Los Angeles is this woman, then the San Fernando Valley is her teenybopper sister. The teenybopper sister snaps bug stretchy pink bubbles over her tongue and checks her lipgloss in the rearview mirror, . . . Teeny plays the radio too loud and bites her nails, wondering if the glitter polish will posion her."
~ I Was a Teenage Fairy by Block

and "It is a truth universally acknowledged that a young man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife."
~ Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

Answer 2

Ok, here's a good one for ya. It's out of Michael Shaara's "The Killer Angels." Pages 188-189.

"Kilrain rubbed his nose, brooding. Then he said, "The truth is, Colonel, that there's no divine spark, bless you. There's many a man alive no more value than a dead dog. Believe me, when you've seen them hang each other... Equality? Christ in Heaven. What I'm fighting for is the right to prove I'm a better man than many. Where have you seen this divine spark in operation, Colonel? Where have you noted this magnificent equality? The Great White Joker in the Sky dooms us all to stupidity or poverty from birth. No two things on earth are equal or have an equal chance, not a leaf nor a tree. There's many a man worse than me, and some better, but I don't think race or country matters a damn. What matters is justice. 'Tis why I'm here. I'll be treated as I deserve, not as my father deserved. I'm Kilrain, and I God damn all gentlement. There only one aristocracy and that's right here--" he tapped his white skull with a thick finger "and you, Colonel laddie, are a member of it and don't even know it. You are damned good at everything I've seen you do, a good coldier, an honest man, and you got a good heart on you too, which is rare in a clever man. Strange thing, I'm not a clever man meself, but I when I run across it. The strange and marvelous thing about you, Colonel darlin', is that you believe in mankind, even preachers, whereas when you've got my great experience of the world you will have learned that good men are rare, much rarer that you think. Ah--" he raised his hands, smiling-- "Don't you worry about ministers. The more you kill the more you do the world a service." He chuckled, rubbing his face. His nose was fat and soft, rippling under his fingers."

Answer 3

John Dann MacDonald in the introduction of The Good Old Stuff 1982-
"I think that writing-good writing-should be like listening to music,where you pick out themes, and then, you see what the composer is doing with those themes, and then, just when you think you have him properly analyzed, and his methods identified, he will put in a little quirk, a little twist, that will be so unexpected that you read it with a sense of glee, a sense of joy, because of its aptness, even though it may be a very dire and bloody part of the book."
Read his Travis McGee series and you will be astounded by his prose and his outlook on the environment that early on.
This was back when writers had a vocabulary and didn't use the "F" word every other word.

Answer 4

One favorite anyway--from Catcher In the Rye:

I danced with them all--the whole three of them--one at a time. The one ugly one, Laverne, wasn't too bad a dancer, but the other one, old Marty, was murder. Old Marty was like dragging the Statue of Liberty around the floor. The only way I could even half enjoy myself dragging her around was if I amused myself a little. So I told her I just saw Gary Cooper, the movie star, on the other side of the floor.

"Where?" she asked me--excited as hell. "Where?"

"Aw, you just missed him. He just went out. Why didn't you look when I told you?"

She practically stopped dancing, and started looking over everybody's heads to see if she could see him. "Oh, shoot!" she said. I'd just about broken her heart--I really had. I was sorry as hell I'd kidded her. Some people you shouldn't kid, even if they deserve it.

Here's what was very funny, though. When we got back to the table, old Marty told the other two that Gary Cooper had just gone out. Boy, old Laverne and Bernice nearly committed suicide when they heard that. They got all excited and asked Marty if she'd seen him and all. Old Mart said she'd only caught a glimpse of him. That killed me.

(Another favorite of mine from that book is the scene early on with Old Spencer and his cement bed. And then of course there's Phoebe right toward the end: "Daddy'll kill you.")

Answer 5

From "Charlotte's Web":
"Wilbur never forgot Charlotte. Although he loved her children and grandchildren dearly, none of the new spiders ever quite took her place in his heart. She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Charlotte was both."

Answer 6

"Being in love was like China: you knew it was there, and no doubt it was very interesting, and some people went there, but I never would. I'd spend all my life without ever going to China, but it wouldn't matter, because there was the rest of the world to visit... (but) I want to go to China."

Answer 7

The Bible verse from 1 Corinthians regarding "The foolishness of God is wiser than men".... plus, "The heart has its reasons, whereof reason knows nothing."