Literary Quote of the Day

THE BATTLE


Would you like to hear
Of the terrible night
When I bravely fought the - 
No?
All right.


~ Shel Silverstein, Where the Sidewalk Ends

Literary Quote of the Day

The way you define yourself as a writer is that you write every time you have a free minute. If you didn't behave that way you would never do anything.

~ John Irving

Literary Quote of the Day

"Can you imagine a stretch of grassy land bubbling like water in a pot?  For that is really the best description of what was happening.  In all directions it was swelling into humps.  They were of very different sizes, some no bigger than molehills, some as big as wheelbarrows, two the size of cottages.  And the humps moved and swelled till they burst, and the crumbled earth poured out of them, and from each hump there came out an animal.  The moles came out just as you might see a mole come out in England.  the dogs came out, barking the moment their heads were free, and struggling as you've seen them do when they are getting through a narrow hole in a hedge.  The stags were the queerest to watch, for of course the antlers came up a long time before the rest of them, so at first Digory thought they were trees.  The frogs, who all came up near the river, went straight into it with a plop-plop and a loud croaking.  The panthers, leopards and things of that sort, sat down at once to wash the loose earth off their hind quarters and then stood up against the trees to sharpen their front claws.  Showers of birds came out of the trees. Butterflies fluttered.  Bees got to work on the flowers as if they hadn't a second to lose.  But the greatest moment of all was when the biggest hump broke like a small earthquake and out came the sloping back, the large, wise head, and the four baggy-trousered legs of an elephant.  And now you could hardly hear the song of the Lion; there was so much cawing, cooing, crowing, braying, neighing, baying, barking, lowing, bleating, and trumpeting."


~ C. S. Lewis, The Magician's Nephew

Literary Quote of the Day

One Step Backward Taken


Not only sands and gravels
Were once more on their travels,
But gulping muddy gallons
Great boulders off their balance
Bumped heads together dully
And started down the gully.
Whole capes caked off in slices.
I felt my standpoint shaken
In the universal crisis.
But with one step backward taken
I saved myself from going.
A world torn loose went by me.
Then the rain stopped and the blowing,
And the sun came out to dry me. 


~ Robert Frost

Literary Quote of the Day

"It smells terrible in here.' 

Well, what do you expect? The human body, when confined, produces certain odors which we tend to forget in this age of deodorants and other perversions. Actually, I find the atmosphere of this room rather comforting. Schiller needed the scent of apples rotting in his desk in order to write. I, too, have my needs. You may remember that Mark Twain preferred to lie supinely in bed while composing those rather dated and boring efforts which contemporary scholars try to prove meaningful. Veneration of Mark Twain is one of the roots of our current intellectual stalemate." 

— John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces

Literary Quote of the Day

"For awhile I taped soap operas and watched them at night when I thought I might be forgetting what it was like to be human. After a while I stopped, because from the examples I saw on those shows, forgetting humanity was a good thing." 


~ Charlaine Harris, Dead Until Dark

Literary Quote of the Day

"I quite agree with you," said the Duchess; "and the moral of that is--'Be what you would seem to be'--or if you'd like it put more simply--'Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'"
"I think I should understand that better," Alice said very politely, "`if I had it written down: but I can't quite follow it as you say it."
"That's nothing to what I could say if I chose," the Duchess replied, in a pleased tone.
"Pray don't trouble yourself to say it any longer than that," said Alice.


~ Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Literary Quote of the Day

I have eaten your bread and salt,
    I have drunk your water and wine,
The deaths ye died I have watched beside,
    And the lives that ye led were mine.


Was there aught that I did not share
    In vigil or toil or ease, - 
One joy or woe that I did not know,
    Dear hearts across the seas?


I have written the tale of our life
    For a sheltered people's mirth,
In jesting guise - but ye are wise,
    And ye know what the jest is worth.


~ Rudyard Kipling, The Works of Rudyard Kipling

Literary Quote of the Day

"There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are either well written or badly written. That is all." 


~ Oscar Wilde 

Literary Quote of the Day

Anything that is in the world when you’re born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural part of the way the world works. Anything that’s invented between when you’re fifteen and thirty- five is new and exciting and revolutionary and you can probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re thirty-five is against the natural order of things.


~ Douglas Adams, The Salmon of Doubt

Literary Quote of the Day

"I believe there are techniques of the human mind whereby, in its dark deep, problems are examined, rejected or accepted.  Such activities sometimes concern facets a man does not know he has.  How often one goes to sleep troubled and full of pain, not knowing what causes the travail, and in the  morning a whole new direction and a clearness is there, maybe the result of the black reasoning.  And again there are mornings when ecstasy bubbles in the blood, and the stomach and chest are tight and electric with joy, and nothing in the thoughts to justify it or cause it."


~ John Steinbeck, East of Eden

Literary Quote of the Day

"Believe it or not, at one time batters could order the kind of pitch they wanted, either high or low.  Imagine telling a pitcher, 'I'll have a meatball, and while you're at it, add a gopher ball, and I'll finish with a lollipop.'"


* meatball - an easy pitch to hit


* gopher ball - a pitch that will 'go fer' a home run


* lollipop - a slow pitch that is easy to hit


~ Sally Cook & James Charlton, Hey Batta Batta Swing!

Literary Quote of the Day

"Necessity may be the mother of invention, but doing something because it might be
cool is the weird, drunken uncle of invention.  Sometimes weird, drunken uncles will
teach you things your mother won’t."


~ Gary Hoover, Land of Nod, The Artifact