A New York Times blog is soliciting your favorite quotes from a recent book. Below are some of my favorites from the page. The first one below isn’t on the page but should be. I will submit it — hat tip to my Mom for sending to me (love you Mom!).
"Then, after a while, the sun was in my eyes, for I was driving west. So I pulled the sun screen down and squinted and put the throttle to the floor. And kept on moving west. For West is where we all plan to go someday. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and see the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire. It is where you go when you hear that thar’s gold in them-thar hills. It is where you go to grow up with the country. It is where you go to spend your old age. Or it is just where you go."
-Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men
“You gave your life to become the person you are right now. Was it worth it?”
– One by Richard Bach.
-"What’s it like to be Asian?"
-"What’s it like to be Jewish?"
-"I’m not really a practicing Jew. I sometimes eat pork."
-"I’m not really a practicing Asian. I sometimes use a fork."
– Still Angry Little Girls by Lela Lee
"People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that’s holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life. A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another level of yourself to you, and then they leave. And thank God for it."
– Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert
"Scattered among them were a handful of soldiers sprawled on their backs as if sleep was a car that had hit them dead on, their necks twisted sideways, their mouths wrenched open, their rifles resting in their open hands like ripe fruit.”
– Bel Canto by Ann Patchett
“Knowing that everything comes to an end is a gift of experience, a consolation gift for knowing that we ourselves are coming to an end. Before we get it we live in a continuous present, and imagine a future as more of that present. Happiness is endless happiness, innocent of its own sure passing. Pain is endless pain.”
– This Boy’s Life By Tobias Wolff
“Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.”
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
QUOTATION, not QUOTE. QUOTE is a verb. QUOTATION is a noun.