Share your favourite passages/excerpts/etc. Rate others The

I don't like work — no man does — but I like what is in work — the chance to find yourself. Your own reality — for yourself, not for others — what no other man can ever know.

>>10024977
>>10024984
Excellent

>>10024991
I was just thinking about this one today. The alliteration is what makes it.

My favorite:

But on the way home tonight, you wish you'd picked him up, held him a bit. Just held him, very close to your heart, his cheek by the hollow of your shoulder, full of sleep. As if it were you who could, somehow, save him. For the moment not caring who you're supposed to be registered as. For the moment anyway, no longer who the Caesars say you are. O Jesu parvule, / Nach dir ist mir so weh... So this pickup group, these exiles and horny kids, sullen civilians called up in their middle age, men fattening despite their hunger, flatulent because of it, pre-ulcerous, hoarse, runny-nosed, red-eyed, sore-throated, piss-swollen men suffering from acute lower backs and all-day hangovers, wishing death on officers they truly hate, men you have seen on foot and smileless in the cities but forgot, men who don't remember you either, knowing they ought to be grabbing a little sleep, not out here performing for strangers, give you this evensong, climaxing now with its rising fragment of some ancient scale, voices overlapping three- and fourfold, up, echoing, filling the entire hollow of the church- no counterfeit baby, no announcement of the Kingdom, not even a try at warming or lighting this terrible night, only, damn us, our scruffy obligatory little cry, our maximum reach outward- praise be to God!- for you to take back to your war-address, your war-identity, across the snow's footprints and tiretracks finally to the path you must create by yourself, alone in the dark. Whether you want it or not, whatever seas you have crossed, the way home....

File: 1495404363404.jpg (10KB, 450x450px) Image search: [Google]

10KB, 450x450px

"Do you know why I believe in the novel? It's a democratic shout. Anybody can write a great novel, one great novel, almost any amateur off the street. I believe this, George. Some nameless drudge, some desperado with barely a nurtured dream can sit down and find his voice and luck out and do it. Something so angelic it makes your jaw hang open. The spray of talent, the spray of ideas. One thing unlike another, one voice unlike the next. Ambiguities, contradictions, whispers, hints. And this is what you want to destroy."

“In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I've been turning over in my mind ever since.
"Whenever you feel like criticizing any one," he told me, "just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had.”
Thoughts?

Hamlet's soliloquy from Act 5 Scene 5

I can recite it from memory even though I probaby havent seen or heard it in 4 years or so

"Major Major's father was a sober God-fearing man whose idea of a good joke was to lie about his age. He was a long-limbed farmer, a God-fearing, freedom-loving, law-abiding rugged individualist who held that federal aid to anyone but farmers was creeping socialism. He advocated thrift and hard work and disapproved of loose women who turned him down. His specialty was Alfalfa, and he made a good thing of not growing any. The government paid him very well for every bushel of alfalfa he did not grow. The more alfalfa he did not grow, the more money the government gave him, and he spent every penny he didn't earn on new land to increase the amount of alfalfa he did not produce.Major Major's father worked without rest at not growing alfalfa. On long winter evenings he did not mend harness, and he sprang out of bed at the crack of noon every day just to make certain that no chores would not be done. He invested in land wisely and soon was not growing more alfalfa than any other man in the country. Neighbors sought him out for advice on all subjects, for he had made much money and was therefore wise."

From Catch-22. I could have gone for any other excerpt from that book, but that long screed had me in stitches. It comes pretty early in the novel and it was what convinced me to stop reading the pirated EPUB I had and go out buy a real copy of it.

It's full of ridiculous, ironic dialogue and absurd situations while still giving you something to activate some almonds.

I never thought I'd enjoy a postmodern book, let alone a supposed comedy that clocks in at over 450 pages.

File: 7mgdq2tlh4py.jpg (147KB, 2000x1335px) Image search: [Google]

147KB, 2000x1335px

"Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or a valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much."

>>10024977
So far every excerpt in this thread has been wonderful