Microblog Memes

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

"It is important, when killing a nun, to ensure that you bring an army of sufficient size. For Sister Thorn of the Sweet Mercy convent Lano Tacsis brought two hundred men."

• Red Sister, Mark Lawrence.

Good book if you want something a bit like Harry Potter but aimed at a more mature audience and not funding the stripping away of human rights.

“Ba-room, ba-room, ba-room, baripity, baripity, baripity, baripity - good.”

Katherine Paterson, Bridge to Terabithia

(The context turns out to be the protagonist listening to his dad start the truck and drive away.)

Damn, this post honestly reminded me why I love reading. Thanks for that.

“So… You’ll cut my head off.” I raised an eyebrow at the salescritter. I was baiting him. I knew it, he knew it, I knew he knew it.

We are Legion (We are Bob) by Dennis E. Taylor

Honestly it doesn't do the series justice, but it's still a standout.

The first concussion cut the rocket up the side with a giant can opener. The men were thrown into space like a dozen wriggling silverfish. They were scattered into a dark sea; and the ship, in a million pieces, went on, a meteor swarm seeking a lost sun.

-Bradbury, Kaleidoscope

An evocative one which has stayed with me: “I had barely regained the ability to walk. I could not chase women, but could slowly make my way up the stairs to the whorehouse.”

I can’t remember where it’s from. Perhaps Bukowski or one of his contemporaries?

“In a hole in a ground there lived a hobbit.” JRR Tolkien, The Hobbit

Late to the party, but:

A vessel may be defined as an object that keeps the water either in or out; it is the latter sort that concerns us.

The Elements of Seamanship by Roger C Taylor

I saw my first goblin the same day I saw my first shipwreck.

I was under sail, on my way to war. On my way to fall in love with death, and with a queen.

On my way to lose all of my friends, and two of my brothers.

I would see a great city fall in blood and fire, betrayed by a false god.

Later, I would be commanded to die on a high stone bridge, but I would fail in this.

The rest of the First Lanza of His Majesty’s Corvid Knights would not fail.

This is not a happy story, but it is a true one.

I have no time for lies, or for liars.

• The Daughters War

And yes, Corvid Knights are as badass as you think. Maybe more.

Call me Ishmael.

One of the all time greats.

This is the story of a bloodstained boy. There he stands, swaying as utterly as any windblown sapling. He is quite, quite red. - Railsea, China Mieville.

The first line of James Ellroy's LA Confidential is what immediately moved me from solely reading fantasy and sci-fi as a young man and opened the door a world of hard-boiled crime that would go on to include the classics like Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler.

There's something about Ellroy's clipped, staccatto writing rhythm (he calls it "shotgun prose") that grabbed me from the very first moment.

An abandoned auto court in the San Berdoo foothills; Buzz Meeks checked in with ninetyfour thousand dollars, eighteen pounds of high-grade heroin, a 10-gauge pump, a .38 special, a .45 automatic and a switchblade he'd bought off a pachuco at the border--right before he spotted the car parked across the line: Mickey Cohen goons in an LAPD unmarked, Tijuana cops standing by to bootjack a piece of his goodies, dump his body in the San Ysidro River.

Solving the following riddle will reveal the awful secret behind the universe, assuming you do not go utterly mad in the attempt. If you already happen to know the awful secret behind the universe, feel free to skip ahead.

-John Dies at the End

And my personal favorite...

I met my guardian angel today. She shot me in the face.

-The Unnoticeables

The Hegemony Consul sat on the balcony of his ebony spaceship and played Rachmaninoff’s Prelude in C-sharp Minor on an ancient but well-maintained Steinway while great, green, saurian things surged and bellowed in the swamps below.

One I've recently re-read. Not quite as catchy as some of the others here, but manages to capture the world and mood of the setting remarkably well in just one sentence.

From The Broken Earth Trilogy by N. K. Jemison

LET’S START WITH THE END of the world, why don’t we? Get it over with and move on to more interesting things.

• The Fifth Season

HMM. NO. I’M TELLING THIS WRONG.

• The Obelisk Gate

TIME GROWS SHORT, MY LOVE. Let’s end with the beginning of the world, shall we? Yes. We shall.

• The Stone Sky

The dedications are good too. As are the entire books, go read them. The dedications in respective order:

For all those who have to fight for the respect that everyone else is given without question

To those who have no choice but to prepare their children for the battlefield

To those who’ve survived: Breathe. That’s it. Once more. Good. You’re good. Even if you’re not, you’re alive. That is a victory.

"Beneath the floor of a very old forest, nestled in among some nice, rich topsoil, lived a family of worms. Earthworms, to be exact." Gary Larson ~ 'There's A Hair In My Dirt!'

Let's go with something more somber.

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 Nabokov

It's not strictly the opening, because it comes after a fake foreword presenting this, the main text, as a true crime story, written by the criminal himself. It sets the mood quite effectively. These sentences are the equivalent of drawing hearts around the name of your crush. And while the writer is shown to obsess over Lolita, he is only concerned with his own person. His victim is only presented as something within him (poignantly his loins and mouth) and not as a person separate from and outside of him.

And mind: AI could not come up with something like that: No tongue or lips.

"My name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I was murdered on December 6, 1973." the lovely bones