Pick-a-Shelf discussion

The books may stand alone, but your quotes here will bring them together. Pick something that made you laugh, cry, or just shake your head. Is it the best quote of the book, or the worst? Whatever you think, give us a quote and let us see into your stand alones.

Steina's fingers are cold. She lets go of my hands and wraps her arms around my neck. The sound of her sobbing is loud in my ear, but I cling to her because her body is warm and I cannot remember when someone last held me like this, when someone last cared enough to lay their cheek next to mine.

Lana wrote: "
Steina's fingers are cold. She lets go of my hands and wraps her arms around my neck. The sound of her sobbing is loud in my ear, but I cling to her because her bo..."

Fascinating! I'm going to be interested to read your review, and see whether you liked the book. It looks like it might be good.

I loved it. (Read it in about 3 days, which is quite good for me considering I work & have a husband plus an 11 y.o. & a 2 y.o!). May not be to everyone's liking as it has no humour. That's the nature of the topic though. Even so, I didn't find it dark but strangely uplifting. Amazing for a debut novel. I also like the fact that it's by an Australian author & based on a true story.

From Fahrenheit 451 "we cannot tell the precise moment when friendship is formed. As in filling a vessel drop by drop, there is at last a drop which makes it run over, so in a series of kindnesses there I a at last one which makes the heart run over"

From an abundance of Katherine's "but mothers lie. it's in the job description"

Susan wrote: "Lana wrote: "
Steina's fingers are cold. She lets go of my hands and wraps her arms around my neck. The sound of her sobbing is loud in my ear, but I cling to her b..."

Sorry, I didn't reply to your mssg direct (as I saw your post on my Kindle) but made a new post. See my message 4 on this thread to see just how much I like it!

From The Wicked and the Just, since there are 2 distinctive POVs I am going to share a quote from both...

Cecily (pg. 23)
I will be murdered as sure a God hates sin. Some big hairy Welshman will beat me to death with my own market basket. I shouldn't even be here; I should be at Edgeley Hall throwing sticks to Salvo's grandpuppies and stitching my bridal linens.

Gwinny (pg.35)
Open my hand. There he is. Staring out, hair like the waves, becrowned. Bastard has the gall to smirk, even cast into silver.
He is why.
It is he who reduced us so.

Lying down on my bed, I pick up the picture of Nikki and tell her all about my date and how I gave the waitress a nice tip and how sad Tiffany seems and how much I can't wait for apart time to end so Nikki and I can share raisin bran at some diner and walk through the cool early September air -- and then I'm crying again.

Ah, Tara! You found my new 2-POV book for me. Gotta read that one!

There were so many bits in this book that I would have liked to quote - most went for more than a page though!

"He was looking at Mr Nancy, an old black man with a pencil moustache, in his check sports jacket and his lemon-yellow gloves, riding a carousel lion as it rose and lowered, high in the air; and, at the same time, in the same place, he saw a jewelled spider as high as a horse, its eyes an emerald nebula, strutting, staring down at him; and simultaneously he was looking at an extraordinarily tall man with teak-coloured skin and three sets of arms, wearing a flowing ostrich-feather headdress, his face painted with red strips, riding an irritated golden lion, two of his six hands holding on tightly to the beast's mane; and he was also seeing a young black boy, dressed in rags, his left foot all swollen and crawling with black flies; and last of all, and behind all these things, Shadow was looking at a tiny brown spider, hiding under a withered ochre leaf."

Susan wrote: "Ah, Tara! You found my new 2-POV book for me. Gotta read that one!"

Glad to help. It is a pretty quick read too.

Tara wrote: "Susan wrote: "Ah, Tara! You found my new 2-POV book for me. Gotta read that one!"

Glad to help. It is a pretty quick read too."

Oh, oops. It looks like a great read, but it won't work for March. No "H" anywhere. Drat! That keeps happening to me.

from Looking for Alibrandi, p. 46:

I thought he'd be tall.
He wasn't.
I thought he'd be good-looking.
He wasn't.
I thought he'd look like a weakling.
He didn't.
He had a sense of strength about him. A kind of tilt to his head when he looked at me. He looked like an intellectual and so sure of himself. Somehow I figured that women would really go for him. He was very solid, and when I looked into his eyes I saw an obvious resemblance.

So I just finished re-reading The Princess Bride, so please bear with me through my own personal favorite quotes:

"(This was after stew, but so is everything. When the first man clambered from the slime and made his first home on land, what he had for supper that first night was stew.)"

"(This was after taxes. But everything is after taxes. Taxes were here even before stew.)"

"There have been five great kisses since 1642 B.C., when Saul and Delilah Korn's inadvertent discovery swept across Western civilization. (Before then couples hooked thumbs.) And the precise rating of kisses is a terribly difficult thing, often leading to great controversy, because although everyone agrees with the formula of affection times purity times intensity times duration, no one has ever been completely satisfied with how much weight each element should receive. But on any system, there are five that everyone agrees deserve full marks.

Well, this one left them all behind."

"Life is pain," his mother said. "Anybody that says different is selling something."

"'HERE COME THE KING BATS!' Fezzik screamed..."

"Sonny, don't you tell me what' worth while - true love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops. Everybody knows that."

And of course...

"Hello... My name is Inigo Montoya; you killed my father... Prepare to die..."

, p.30

“They will say ‘Agnes’ and see the spider, the witch caught in the webbing of her own fateful weaving. They might see the lamb circled by ravens, bleating for a lost mother. But they will not see me. I will not be there.”

I Capture the Castle

"And I quite understood; when things mean a very great deal to you, exciting anticipation just isn't safe."

and...

"'I suppose church services make a conventional noise to you, too - and I rather understand it. Oh, they're all right for the old hands and they make for sociability, but I sometimes think their main use is to help weather churches - like smoking pipes to colour them, you know. If any - well, unreligious person, needed consolation from religion, I'd advise him or her to sit in an empty church. Sit, not kneel. And listen, not pray. Prayer's a very tricky business.'"

Just finished The Book Thief, and here is the last line:

"I am haunted by humans."