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Post your favourite quotes from literature. Here's one from William Gass' The Tunnel:
>Wild eyes were another sign. It is something I have seldom seen — the expression of an ecstatic state — though much is foolishly written of them, as if they grew like Jerusalem artichokes along the road. The eyes are black, right enough, whatever their normal color is; they are black because their perception is condensed to a coal, because the touch and taste and perfume of the lover, the outcry of a dirty word, a welcome river, have been reduced in the heat of passion to a black ash, and this unburnt residue of oxidation, this calyx, replaces the pupil so it no longer receives but sends, and every hair is on end, though perhaps only outspread on a pillow, and the nostrils are flared, mouth agape, cheeks sucked so the whole face seems as squeezed as a juiced fruit; I know, for once Lou went into that wildness while we were absorbing one another, trying to kiss, not merely forcefully, not the skull of our skeleton, but the skull and all the bones on which the essential self is hung, kiss so the shape of the soul is stirred too, that's what is called the ultimate French, the furtherest fuck, when a cock makes a concept cry out and climax; I know, for more than once, though not often, I shuddered into that other region, when a mouth drew me through its generosity into the realm of unravel, and every sensation lay extended as a lake, every tie was loosed, and the glue of things dissolved. I knew I wore the wild look then. The greatest gift you can give another human being is to let them warm you till, in passing beyond pleasure, your defenses fall, your ego surrenders, its structure melts, its towers topple, lies, fancies, vanities, blow away in no wind, and you return, not to the clay you came from — the unfired vessel — but to the original moment of inspiration, when you were the unabbreviated breath of God.
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>>8606576
woah
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>>8606576
I've read that out loud and it sounds absolutely great. Good passage anon.
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>>8606576
>The stars are real. The future is that mountain.
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Owned this book since it was released, but never read it. That passage has convinced me to finally dive in. Thanks, anon -- that really was something...
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There was one enemy left, two if you counted God.
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Beautiful, OP. I intend on eventually get into Gass, and that quote is a nice reminder.
Is The Tunnel a good introduction to Gass or should I read In the Heart of the Heart of the Country first?
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>>8606718
Maybe Cartesian Sonata is the best starting point. Theyre a bunch of short stories. Omensetter's Luck for a first novel, though it's not really an easy book. From there I think you can jump into The Tunnel if you want, or take the scenic route and go with ITHOTHOTC
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>>8606718
I started with the Tunnel and I was fine. If you like his style you'll be fine, it's not like he's a hard author to read like Joyce or something, he's just very pretty and stylistic. His other stuff is great though
Also it's lovely to see the Tunnel embraced here instead of received with gassy memes.
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The man has never written a sentence that isn't astonishing.
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>>8606642
holy.....
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From "The Plague" - Camus
>"Thus, too, they came to know the incorrigible sorrow of all prisoners and exiles,
which is to live in company with a memory that serves no purpose. Even the past, of
which they thought incessantly, had a savor only of regret. For they would have wished
to add to it all that they regretted having left undone, while they might yet have done it,
with the man or woman whose return they now awaited; just as in all the activities, even
the relatively happy ones, of their life as prisoners they kept vainly trying to include the
absent one. And thus there was always something missing in their lives. Hostile to the
past, impatient of the present, and cheated of the future, we were much like those whom
men's justice, or hatred, forces to live behind prison bars. Thus the only way of escaping
from that intolerable leisure was to set the trains running again in one's imagination and
in filling the silence with the fancied tinkle of a doorbell, in practice obstinately mute. "
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>>8606576
desu I hate this passage
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PRINCE HENRY
Swearest thou, ungracious boy? henceforth ne'er look
on me. Thou art violently carried away from grace:
there is a devil haunts thee in the likeness of an
old fat man; a tun of man is thy companion. Why
dost thou converse with that trunk of humours, that
bolting-hutch of beastliness, that swollen parcel
of dropsies, that huge bombard of sack, that stuffed
cloak-bag of guts, that roasted Manningtree ox with
the pudding in his belly, that reverend vice, that
grey iniquity, that father ruffian, that vanity in
years? Wherein is he good, but to taste sack and
drink it? wherein neat and cleanly, but to carve a
capon and eat it? wherein cunning, but in craft?
wherein crafty, but in villany? wherein villanous,
but in all things? wherein worthy, but in nothing?
FALSTAFF
I would your grace would take me with you: whom
means your grace?
PRINCE HENRY
That villanous abominable misleader of youth,
Falstaff, that old white-bearded Satan.
FALSTAFF
My lord, the man I know.
PRINCE HENRY
I know thou dost.
FALSTAFF
But to say I know more harm in him than in myself,
were to say more than I know. That he is old, the
more the pity, his white hairs do witness it; but
that he is, saving your reverence, a whoremaster,
that I utterly deny. If sack and sugar be a fault,
God help the wicked! if to be old and merry be a
sin, then many an old host that I know is damned: if
to be fat be to be hated, then Pharaoh's lean kine
are to be loved. No, my good lord; banish Peto,
banish Bardolph, banish Poins: but for sweet Jack
Falstaff, kind Jack Falstaff, true Jack Falstaff,
valiant Jack Falstaff, and therefore more valiant,
being, as he is, old Jack Falstaff, banish not him
thy Harry's company, banish not him thy Harry's
company: banish plump Jack, and banish all the world.
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Gassposters don't belong.
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>>8606576
>tfw the library will have the Tunnel ready for me tomorrow; IM HYPED
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