# Favorite book passages...



## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Loss of a Halo

"Eh! What! You here, my dear? You in a place of ill-repute! You, the drinker of quintessences! You the eater of ambrosia! Indeed, this really surprises me."

"-- My dear, you know my terror of horses and of carriages. Just a little while ago, as I was crossing the boulevard very hastily and jumping about in the mud, through that moving chaos in which death comes galloping toward you from all sides at once, I moved abruptly and my halo slipped from my head into the mire on the pavement. I didn't have the courage to pick it up. I decided that it would be less disagreeable to lose my insignia than to break my bones. And surely, I told myself, bad luck is always good for something. Now I can walk about incognito, commit base actions, and give myself over to filthy debauchery, like simple mortals. And here I am, just like you, as you can see!"

"-- You should at least place a lost and found advertisement for that halo, or make a claim for it at the police station."

"-- By my faith! No. I'm quite comfortable here. You're the only one who has recognized me. Anyway, dignity bores me. And I can't help but feel joyful when I think that some bad poet will pick it up and impudently set it on his head. What a delight to make someone happy! And especially someone who will make me laugh! Just think if it were X, or Z! Hey! Wouldn't that be funny!"

Charles Baudelaire ''La Spleen De Paris''


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## elgar's ghost (Aug 8, 2010)

Can plays count?

Henry V doing the campfire rounds the night before Agincourt: 

'Good morrow, old Sir Thomas Erpingham - a good soft white pillow for that good white head were better than a churlish turf of France.'

Erpingham: 'Not so, my liege, this lodging likes me better, since I may say "now lie I like a king"...'

And part of a Henry V soliloquy from the same work where he reflects with guilt on his father's dubious acquisition of the English throne at the expense of Richard II:

'More will I do - though all that I can do is nothing worth, since that my penitence comes after all, imploring pardon...'


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## Xaltotun (Sep 3, 2010)

"No. The corpse of John Shakespeare does not walk the night. From hour to hour it rots and rots. He rests, disarmed from fatherhood, having devised that mystical estate upon his son. Boccaccio's Calandrino was the first and last man who felt himself with child. Fatherhood, in the sense of conscious begetting, is unknown to man. It is a mystical estate, an apostolic succession, from only begetter to only begotten. On that mystery and not on the madonna which the cunning Italian intellect flung to the mob of Europe the church is founded and founded irremovably because founded, like the world, macro- and microcosm, upon the void. Upon incertitude, upon unlikelyhood. _Amor matris,_ subjective and objective genitive, may be the only true thing in life. Paternity may be a legal fiction. Who is the father of any son that any son should love him or he any son?"

-from James Joyce's _Ulysses_


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## clavichorder (May 2, 2011)

I really can never recall much text from the things, even with classic reading. I might just have poor verbal recall, as I was never able to memorize movie dialogue, like my father's friend who can act out word for word many Star Trek episodes that I have seen a number of times too. Same problem with lyrics to popular songs and poetry. 

Generally stuck trying to convey the gist of things in my own words... I envy you guys.


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Well my friend you have a lot of books or parts of them online you can refresh your memory..


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Instead of text i chose this narration...Nicely done...


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## GGluek (Dec 11, 2011)

“A wonderful fact to reflect upon, that every human creature is
constituted to be that profound secret and mystery to every other. A
solemn consideration, when I enter a great city by night, that every
one of those darkly clustered houses encloses its own secret; that every
room in every one of them encloses its own secret; that every beating
heart in the hundreds of thousands of breasts there, is, in some of
its imaginings, a secret to the heart nearest it! Something of the
awfulness, even of Death itself, is referable to this. No more can I
turn the leaves of this dear book that I loved, and vainly hope in time
to read it all. No more can I look into the depths of this unfathomable
water, wherein, as momentary lights glanced into it, I have had glimpses
of buried treasure and other things submerged. It was appointed that the
book should shut with a spring, for ever and for ever, when I had read
but a page. It was appointed that the water should be locked in an
eternal frost, when the light was playing on its surface, and I stood
in ignorance on the shore. My friend is dead, my neighbour is dead,
my love, the darling of my soul, is dead; it is the inexorable
consolidation and perpetuation of the secret that was always in that
individuality, and which I shall carry in mine to my life's end. In
any of the burial-places of this city through which I pass, is there
a sleeper more inscrutable than its busy inhabitants are, in their
innermost personality, to me, or than I am to them?” Dickens, "A Tale of Two Cities"


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

In the window I smelled all the food of San Francisco. There were seafood places out there where the buns were hot, and the baskets were good enough to eat too. Where the menus themselves were soft with foody esculence as though dipped in hot broths and roasted dry and good enough to eat too. Just show me the bluefish spangle on a seafood menu and I'd eat it; let me smell the drawn butter and lobster claws. There were places where they specialized in thick red roast beef au jus, or roast chicken basted in wine. There were places where hamburgs sizzled on grills and the coffee was only a nickel. And oh, that pan-fried chou mein flavored air that blew into my room from Chinatown, vying with the spaghetti sauces of north Beach, the soft-shell-crab of Fisherman's Wharf - nay, the ribs of Fillmore turning on spits. Throw in the Market Street chili beans, red hot, and french fried potatoes of the Embarcadero wino night, and steamed clams from Sausalito across the bay, and that's my ah-dream of San Francisco.
Jack Kerouac, On The Road


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## Count (Jan 11, 2013)

“If I’d written all the truth I knew for the past ten years, about 600 people—including me—would be rotting in prison cells from Rio to Seattle today. Absolute truth is a very rare and dangerous commodity in the context of professional journalism.”
Hunter S. Thompson, The Great Shark Hunt


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

“I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world.”
― Albert Camus, L'etranger 
“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 
“I have no idea what's awaiting me, or what will happen when this all ends. For the moment I know this: there are sick people and they need curing.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“I had only a little time left and I didn't want to waste it on God.”
― Albert Camus, L'etranger 

“There is not love of life without despair about life.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“If something is going to happen to me, I want to be there.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“It was as if that great rush of anger had washed me clean, emptied me of hope, and, gazing up at the dark sky spangled with its signs and stars, for the first time, the first, I laid my heart open to the benign indifference of the universe.
To feel it so like myself, indeed, so brotherly, made me realize that I'd been happy, and that I was happy still. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“I looked up at the mass of signs and stars in the night sky and laid myself open for the first time to the benign indifference of the world.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“Since we're all going to die, it's obvious that when and how don't matter.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“In the midst of winter, I found there was, within me, an invincible summer.

And that makes me happy. For it says that no matter how hard the world pushes against me, within me, there’s something stronger – something better, pushing right back.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“I had been right I was still right I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well lived it another. I had done this and I hadn t done that. I hadn t done this thing and I had done another. And so? ”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“Have you no hope at all? And do you really live with the thought that when you die, you die, and nothing remains?" "Yes," I said.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“Mostly, I could tell, I made him feel uncomfortable. He didn't understand me, and he was sort of holding it against me. I felt the urge to reassure him that I was like everybody else, just like everybody else. But really there wasn't much point, and I gave up the idea out of laziness.”
― Albert Camus, L'etranger 

“I've never really had much of an imagination. But still I would try to picture the exact moment when the beating of my heart would no longer be going on inside my head.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again. For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“What really counted was the possibility of escape, a leap of freedom, out of the implacable ritual, a wild run for it that would give whatever chance for hope there was. Of course, hope meant being cut down on some street corner, as you ran like mad, by a random bullet. But when I really thought it through, nothing was going to allow me such a luxury. Everything was against it; I would just be caught up in the machinery again.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“I knew that I had shattered the harmony of the day, the exceptional silence of a beach where I'd been happy. Then I fired four more times at the motionless body where the bullets lodged without leaving a trace. And it was like knocking four quick times on the door of unhappiness. ”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I'd
lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people's deaths or a mother's love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we're all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers? Couldn't he see, couldn't he see that? Everybody was privileged. There were only privileged people. The others would all be condemned one day. And he would be condemned, too.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“For the first time in a long time I thought about Maman. I felt as if I understood why at the end of her life she had taken a 'fiancé,' why she had played at beginning again. Even there, in that home where lives were fading out, evening was a kind of wistful respite. So close to death, Maman must have felt free then and ready to live it all again. Nobody, nobody had the right to cry over her. And I felt ready to live it all again too.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“Thus, I always began by assuming the worst; my appeal was dismissed. That meant, of course, I was to die. Sooner than others, obviously. 'But,' I reminded myself, 'it's common knowledge that life isn't worth living, anyhow.' And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten-- since, in either case, other men will continue living, the world will go on as before. Also, whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“I would rather not have upset him, but I couldn't see any reason to change my life. Looking back on it, I wasn't unhappy. When I was a student, I had lots of ambitions like that. But when I had to give up my studies I learned very quickly that none of it really mattered.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“I explained to him, however, that my nature was such that my physical needs often got in the way of my feelings.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“At that time, I often thought that if I had had to live in the trunk of a dead tree, with nothing to do but look up at the sky flowing overhead, little by little I would have gotten used to it.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 


“There was the same dazzling red glare. The sea gasped for air with each shallow, stifled wave that broke on the sand. ...with every blade of light that flashed off the sand, from a bleached shell or a peice of broken glass, my jaws tightened. I walked for a long time.”
― Albert Camus, L'Etranger 

“…He wasn’t even sure he was alive, because he was living like a dead man. Whereas it looked as if I was the one who’d come up emptyhanded. But I was sure about me, about everything, surer than he could ever be, sure of my life and sure of my death I had waiting for me… I had been right, I was still right, I was always right. I had lived my life one way and I could just as well have lived it another. I had done this and I hadn’t done that… Nothing, nothing mattered, and I knew why. So did he. Throughout the whole absurd life I’ve lived, a dark wind had been rising toward me from somewhere deep in my future, across years that were still to come, and as it passed, this wind leveled whatever was offered to me at the time, in years no more real than the ones I was living. What did other people’s deaths or a mother’s love matter to me; what did his God or the lives people choose or the fate they think they elect matter to me when we’re all elected by the same fate, me and billions of privileged people like him who also called themselves my brothers?”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“She was wearing a pair of my pajamas with the sleeves rolled up. When she laughed I wanted her again. A minute later she asked me if I loved her. I told her it didn’t mean anything but that I didn’t think so. She looked sad.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“Big tears of frustration and exhaustion were streaming down his cheeks. But because of all the wrinkles, they weren't dripping off. They spread out and ran together again, leaving a watery film over his ruined face. ”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“I was assailed by memories of a life that wasn't mine anymore, but one in which I'd found the simplest and most lasting joys: the smells of summer, the part of town I loved, a certain evening sky, Marie's dresses and the way she laughed.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“I realized then that a man who had lived only one day could easily live for a hundred years in prison. He would have enough memories to keep him from being bored”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“I felt as I hadn't felt for ages. I had a foolish desire to burst into tears. for the first time I'd realized how all these people loathed me.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

“Some other memories of the funeral have stuck in my mind. The old boy’s face, for instance, when he caught up with us for the last time, just outside the village. His eyes were streaming with tears, of exhaustion or distress, or both together. But because of the wrinkles they couldn’t flow down. They spread out, crisscrossed, and formed a smooth gloss on the old, worn face.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“Some other memories of the funeral have stuck in my mind. The old boy’s face, for instance, when he caught up with us for the last time, just outside the village. His eyes were streaming with tears, of exhaustion or distress, or both together. But because of the wrinkles they couldn’t flow down. They spread out, crisscrossed, and formed a smooth gloss on the old, worn face.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“...he said firmly, "God can help you. All the men I’ve seen in your position turned to Him in their time of trouble." Obviously, I replied, they were at liberty to do so, if they felt like it. I, however, didn’t want to be helped, and I hadn’t time to work up interest for something that didn’t interest me.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“The priest gazed around my cell and answered in a voice that sounded very weary to me. 'Every stone here sweats with suffering, I know that. I have never looked at them without a feeling of anguish. But deep in my heart I know that the most wretched among you have seen a divine face emerge from their darkness. That is the face you are asked to see.'

This perked me up a little. I said I had been looking at the stones in these walls for months. There wasn't anything or anyone in the world I knew better. Maybe at one time, way back, I had searched for a face in them. But the face I was looking for was as bright as the sun and the flame of desire—and it belonged to Marie.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“And, on a wide view, I could see that it makes little difference whether one dies at the age of thirty or threescore and ten—since, in either case, other men and women will continue living, the world will go on as before. Also, whether I died now or forty years hence, this business of dying had to be got through, inevitably. Still, somehow this line of thought wasn't as consoling as it should have been; the idea of all those years of life in hand was a galling reminder!”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“On my way out I was even going to shake his hand, but I remembered just in time that I'd killed a man.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger 

“...there was only one thing that interested her and that was getting into bed with men whenever she'd the chance. And I warned her straight. 'You'll be sorry one day, my girl, and wish you'd got me back'.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

"...as if familiar paths traced in summer skies could lead as easily to prison as to the sleep of the innocent."
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

"The Byronic hero, incapable of love, or capable only of an impossible love, suffers endlessly. He is solitary, languid, his condition exhausts him. If he wants to feel alive, it must be in the terrible exaltation of a brief and destructive action."
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

"In any case, the one man paved the way for the deeds of the other, in a sense foreshadowed and even legitimized by them."
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

"Then there was the church and the villagers on the sidewalks, the red geraniums on the graves in the cemetery, Perez fainting (he crumpled over like a rag doll), the blood-red earth spilling over Maman's casket, the white flesh of the roots mixed in with it, more people, voices, the village, waiting in front of a cafe, the incessant drone of the motor, and my joy when the bus entered the nest of lights that was Algiers and I knew I was going to go to bed and sleep for twelve hours."
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

"We [Raymond and Meursault] stared at each other without blinking, and everything came to a stop there between the sea, the sand, and the sun, and the double silence of the flute and the water. It was then that I realized that you could either shoot or not shoot."
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

"The hearing was adjourned. For a few brief moments, as I left the Law Courts on my way to the van, I recognised the familiar smells and colours of a summer evening. In the darkness of my mobile prison I rediscovered one by one, as if rising from the depths of my fatigue, all the familiar sounds of a town that I loved and of a certain time of day when I sometimes used to feel happy. The cries of the newspaper sellers in the languid evening air, the last few birds in the square, the shouts of the sandwich sellers, the moaning of the trams high in the winding streets of the town and the murmuring of the sky before darkness spills over onto the port, all these sounds marked out an invisible route which I knew so well before going into prison. Yes, this was the time of day when, long ago, I used to feel happy. What always awaited me then was a night of easy, dreamless sleep. And yet something had changed, for with the prospect of the coming day, it was to my cell that I returned. As if a familiar journey under a summer sky could as easily end in prison as in innocent sleep."
― Albert Camus, The Stranger


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## Mesa (Mar 2, 2012)

"I'll show you," she screamed. She flung open her door and ran back to him. Big Joe staggered to his feet under the beating. The stick hammered at his back and shoulders and head. He ran out of the door, protecting his head with his hands.

"Don't." he pleaded. "Now don't do that. What's the matter?"

The fury followed him like a hornet, down the garden path and into the muddy street. Her rage was terrible. She followed him along the street, still beating him.

"Hey," he cried. "Now don't." He grabbed her and held her while her arms struggled violently to be free to continue the beating.

"Oh, great garbage pig!" she cried. "Oh, cow!"

He could not let her go without more beating, so he held her tightly; and as he stood there, love came to Big Joe Portagee. It sang in his head; it roared through his body like a great freshet; it shook him as a tropical storm shakes a forest of palms. He held her tightly for a moment, until her anger relaxed.

- John Steinbeck, _Tortilla Flat_


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

?Source...


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

Like _The Stranger_ Flamme?

:devil:


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## Ramako (Apr 28, 2012)

"Then... who then... is the murderer?" he asked in a breathless voice, unable to restrain himself.

Porfiry Petrovitch sank back in his chair, as though he were amazed at the question.

"Who is the murderer?" he repeated, as though unable to believe his ears. "Why you, Rodion Romanovitch! You are the murderer," he added almost in a whisper, in a voice of genuine conviction.

...

"That's just what I was afraid of!" Porfiry cried warmly and, as it seemed, involuntarily. "That's just what I feared, that you wouldn't care about the mitigation of sentence."

Raskolnikov looked sadly and expressively at him.

"Ah, don't disdain life!" Porfiry went on. "You have a great deal of it still before you. How can you say you don't want a mitigation of sentence? You are an impatient fellow!"

...

"No, you won't run away. A peasant would run away, a fashionable dissenter would run away, the flunkey of another man's thought, for you've only to show him the end of your little finger and he'll be ready to believe in anything for the rest of his life. But you've ceased to believe in your theory already, what will you run away with? And what would you do in hiding? It would be hateful and difficult for you, and what you need more than anything in life is a definite position, an atmosphere to suit you. And what sort of atmosphere would you have? If you ran away, you'd come back to yourself. You can't get on without us. And if I put you in prison,- say you've been there a month, or two, or three- remember my word, you'll confess of yourself and perhaps to your own surprise. You won't know an hour beforehand that you are coming with a confession. I am convinced that you will decide, 'to take your suffering.' You don't believe my words now, but you'll come to it of yourself. For suffering, Rodion Romanovitch, is a great thing. Never mind my having grown fat, I know all the same. Don't laugh at it, there's an idea in suffering, Nokolay is right. No, you won't run away, Rodion Romanovitch."

Dostoevsky's _Crime and Punishment_


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

Ramako said:


> Like _The Stranger_ Flamme?
> 
> :devil:


The more and more you read it reveals you so much new things and details...Thats why it is great...


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## Manxfeeder (Oct 19, 2010)

"You say you love me, and yet you do this to me -- rob me of you forever. I made you with love. I've wept your tears. I've saved you from more than you will ever know. I planted in you this longing for peace only so that one day I could satisfy your longing and watch your happiness. And now you push me away. You put me out of your reach."

The voice of God to someone about to commit suicide, from Graham Greene's _The Heart of the Matter _


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## Huilunsoittaja (Apr 6, 2010)

One of my favorite Tolstoy moments ever:

From his short story_ Family Happiness_:

_He meant to go away immediately after dinner; but, as Katya was tired after church and went to lie down for a little, he had to wait until she woke up in order to say goodby to her. The sun shone into the drawing room, and we went out to the veranda. When we were seated, I began at once, quite calmly, the conversation that was bound to fix the fate of my heart. I began to speak, no sooner and no later, but at the very moment when we sat down, before our talk had taken any turn or color that might have hindered me from saying what I meant to say. I cannot tell myself where it came from -- my coolness and determination and preciseness of expression. It was if something independent of my will was speaking through my lips. He sat opposite me with his elbows resting on the rails of the veranda; he pulled a lilac-branch towards him and stripped the leaves off it. When I began to speak, he let go the branch and leaned his head on one hand. His attitude might have shown either perfect calmness or strong emotion.

"Why are you going?" I asked, significantly, deliberately, and looking straight at him.

He did not answer at once.

"Business!" he muttered at last and dropped his eyes.

I realized how difficult he found it to lie to me, and in reply to such a frank question.

"Listen," I said; you know what today is to me, how important for many reasons. If I question you, it is not to show an interest in your doings (you know that I have become intimate with you and fond of you) -- I ask you this question, because I must know the answer. Why are you going?"

"It is very hard for me to tell you the true reason," he said. "During this week I have thought much about you and about myself, and have decided that I must go. You understand why; and if you care for me, you will ask no questions." He put up a hand to rub his forehead and cover his eyes. "I find it very difficult...But you will understand."

My heart began to beat fast.

"I cannot understand you," I said; I cannot! you must tell me; in God's name and for the sake of this day tell me what you please, and I shall hear it with calmness," I said.

He changed his position, glanced at me, and again drew the lilac-twig towards him.

"Well!" he said, after a short silence and in a voice that tried in vain to seem steady, "it's a foolish business and impossible to put into words, and I feel the difficulty, but I will try to explain it to you," he added, frowning as if in bodily pain.

"Well?" I said.

"Just imagine the existence of a man -- let us call him A -- who has left youth far behind, and of a woman whom we may call B, who is young and happy and has seen nothing as yet of life or of the world. Family circumstances of various kinds brought them together, and he grew to love her as a daughter, and had no fear that his love would change its nature."

He stopped, but I did not interrupt him.

"But he forgot that B was so young, that life was still all a May-game to her," he went on with a sudden swiftness and determination and without looking at me, "and that it was easy to fall in love with her in a different way, and that this would amuse her. He made a mistake and was suddenly aware of another feeling, as heavy as remorse, making its way into his heart, and he was afraid. He was afraid that their old friendly relations would be destroyed, and he made up his mind to go away before that happened." As he said this, he began again to rub his eyes with a pretence of indifference, and to close them.

"Why was he afraid to love differently?" I asked very low; but I restrained my emotion and spokein an even voice. He evidently thought that I was not serious; for he answered as if he were hurt.

"You are young, and I am not young. You want amusement, and I want something different. Amuse yourself, if you like, but not with me. If you do, I shall take it seriously; and then I shall be unhappy, and you will repent. That is what A said," he added; "however, this is all nonsense; but you understand why I am going. And don't let us continue this conversation. Please not!"

"No! no!" I said, "we must continue it," and tears began to tremble in my voice. "Did he lover her, or not?"

He did not answer.

"If he did not love her, why did he treat her as a child and pretend to love her?" I asked.

"Yes, A behaved badly," he interrupted me quickly; "but it all came to an end and they parted friends."

"This is horrible! Is there no other ending?" I said with a great effort and then felt afraid of what I had said.

"Yes, there is," he said, showing a face full of emotion and looking straight at me. "There are two different endings. But, for God's sake, listen to me quietly and don't interrupt. Some say" -- here he stood up and smiled with a smile that was heavy with pain -- "some say that A went off his head, fell passionately in love with B, and told her so. But she only laughed. To her it was all a jest, but to him a matter of life and death."

I shuddered and tried to interrupt him -- tried to say that he must not dare to speak for me; but he checked me, laying his hand on mine.

"Wait!" he said, and his voice shook. "The other story is that she took pity on him, and fancied, poor child, from her ignorance of the world, that she really could love him, and so consented to be his wife. And he, in his madness, believed it -- believed that his whole life could begin anew; but she saw herself that she had deceived him and that he had deceived her.... But let us drop the subject finally," he ended, clearly unable to say more; and then he began to walk up and down in silence before me.

Thought he had asked that subject should be dropped, I saw that his whole soul was hanging on my answer. I tried to speak, but the pain at my heart kept me dumb. I glanced at him -- he was pale and his lower lip trembled. I felt sorry for him. with a sudden effort I broke the bonds of silence which had held me fast, and began to speak in a low inward voice, which I feared would break every moment.

"There is a third ending to the story," I said, and then paused, but he said nothing; "the third ending is that he did not love her, but hurt her, hurt her, and thought that he was right; and he left her and was actually proud of himself. You have been pretending, not I; I have loved you since the first day we met, loved you," I repeated, and at the word "loved" my low inward voice changed, without intention of mine, to a wild cry which frightened me myself.

He stood pale before me, his lip trembled more and more violently, and two tears came out upon his cheeks.

"It is wrong!" I almost screamed, feeling that I was choking with angry unshed tears. "Why do you do it?" I cried and got up to leave him.

But he would not let me go. His head was resting on my knees, his lips were kissing my still trembling hands, and his tears were wetting them. "My God! if I had only known!" he whispered.

"Why? why?" I kept on repeating, but in my heart there was happiness, happiness which had now come back, after so nearly departing for ever.

Five minutes later Sonya was rushing upstairs to Katya and proclaiming all over the house that Masha intended to marry Sergey Mikhaylych._

<3

(Don't worry, this isn't actually a spoiler. The story doesn't end there. There's a twist)

But it's this kind of writing that inspired my writing style today. I've written over a dozen short stories, and looking back at the kind of dialogue Tolstoy achieved here, that's exactly how I want to write. It's beautiful writing.


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

Dad and Dave: On Our Selection

Murtagh Joseph Rudd, known as Dad, and his son Dave finish a bark hut on their newly established ‘selection’ of virgin bush. The rest of the family arrive and get to work, clearing the land by hand and planting a first crop of corn. The challenges include wildlife in their beds and no money to buy a horse, but their hard work pays off. In a year or two, the Rudds have a working farm and a more comfortable home, thanks to the domestic labours of Mrs Rudd. A bushfire and several years of drought impoverish them, but they hold on against all adversity. 

When Kate Rudd, returns from her job teaching in the city, she falls for an eligible young farmer, Sandy Taylor. Dave and his sister Sarah also find sweethearts, although Dad tries to shoot one of them. Kate’s wedding allows all grudges to be forgotten.


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## Novelette (Dec 12, 2012)

"Curses on both cowardice and covetousness! Their vice and villainy are virtue's undoing."

- Sir Gawain and the Green Knight


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## deggial (Jan 20, 2013)

"I think it is agreed by all parties, that this prodigious number of children in the arms, or on the backs, or at the heels of their mothers, and frequently of their fathers, is in the present deplorable state of the kingdom, a very great additional grievance; and therefore whoever could find out a fair, cheap and easy method of making these children sound and useful members of the common-wealth, would deserve so well of the publick, as to have his statue set up for a preserver of the nation.

[...]

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasie, or a ragoust.

I do therefore humbly offer it to publick consideration, that of the hundred and twenty thousand children, already computed, twenty thousand may be reserved for breed, whereof only one fourth part to be males; which is more than we allow to sheep, black cattle, or swine, and my reason is, that these children are seldom the fruits of marriage, a circumstance not much regarded by our savages, therefore, one male will be sufficient to serve four females. That the remaining hundred thousand may, at a year old, be offered in sale to the persons of quality and fortune, through the kingdom, always advising the mother to let them suck plentifully in the last month, so as to render them plump, and fat for a good table. A child will make two dishes at an entertainment for friends, and when the family dines alone, the fore or hind quarter will make a reasonable dish, and seasoned with a little pepper or salt, will be very good boiled on the fourth day, especially in winter." - _A Modest Proposa_l, Dr. Jonathan Swift


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## Wood (Feb 21, 2013)

*The play that can't speak its name*

Let the devil damn thee black, thou cream faced loon.

Blow wind, come wrack, at least we'll die with harness on our back

Will these hands all the great oceans incarnadine, turning the green one red?

Fail? 'Til Birnam Wood comes to Dunsinane we shall not fail. <But it did.>


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## Laura (Mar 7, 2013)

A letter from Sol Lewitt to his niece Eva Hesse

"Dear Eva,

It will be almost a month since you wrote to me and you have possibly forgotten your state of mind (I doubt it though). You seem the same as always, and being you, hate every minute of it. Don’t! Learn to say “**** You” to the world once in a while. You have every right to. Just stop thinking, worrying, looking over your shoulder wondering, doubting, fearing, hurting, hoping for some easy way out, struggling, grasping, confusing, itchin, scratching, mumbling, bumbling, grumbling, humbling, stumbling, numbling, rumbling, gambling, tumbling, scumbling, scrambling, hitching, hatching, bitching, moaning, groaning, honing, boning, horse-********, hair-splitting, nit-picking, ****-trickling, nose sticking, ***-gouging, eyeball-poking, finger-pointing, alleyway-sneaking, long waiting, small stepping, evil-eyeing, back-scratching, searching, perching, besmirching, grinding, grinding, grinding away at yourself. Stop it and just DO!"


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## EddieRUKiddingVarese (Jan 8, 2013)

^Wow Sol was really going for it, hope Eva took it well.............

This could become a new reality TV genre???


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## Flamme (Dec 30, 2012)

http://www.hplovecraft.com/writings/texts/fiction/mb.aspx


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## Crudblud (Dec 29, 2011)

The playwright who wrote the folio of this world and wrote it badly (He gave us light first and the sun two days later), the lord of things as they are whom the most Roman of catholics call _dio boia_, hangman god, is doubtless all in all in all of us, ostler and butcher, and would be bawd and cuckold too but that in the economy of heaven, foretold by Hamlet, there are no more marriages, glorified man, an androgynous angel, being a wife unto himself.


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