The books remind us what asses and fools we are.

[thebooksremindus]

Consider all this; and then turn to this green, gentle, and most docile earth; consider them both, the sea and the land; and do you not find a strange analogy to something in yourself?  For as this appalling ocean surrounds the verdant land, so in the soul of man there lies one insular Tahiti, full of peace and joy, but encompassed by all the horrors of the half-known life.  God keep thee!  Push not off from that isle, thou canst never return!

Moby-Dick; or, The Whale by Herman Melville

[thebooksremindus]

‘Listen,’ said Crowly desperately, “how many musicians do you think your side have got, eh?  First grade, I mean.’ Aziraphale looked taken aback. ‘Well, I should think—’ he began. ‘Two,’ said Crowly.  ‘Elgar and Liszt.  That’s all.  We’ve got the rest.  Beethoven, Brahms, all the Bachs, Mozart, the lot.  Can you imagine eternity with Elgar?’ Aziraphale shut his eyes.  ‘All too easily,’ he groaned.

Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett

[thebooksremindus]

Catherine’s face was just like the landscape—shadows and sunshine flitting over it, in rapid succession; but the shadows rested longer and the sunshine was more transient, and her poor little heart reproached itself for even that passing forgetfulness of its cares.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

[thebooksremindus]

Tell me, Legolas, why did I come on this Quest?  Little did I know where the chief peril lay!  Truly Elrond spoke, saying that we could not foresee what we might meet upon our road.  Torment in the dark was the danger that I feared, and it did not hold me back.  But I would not have come, had I known the danger of light and joy.

The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

[thebooksremindus]

It was September. In the last days when things are getting sad for no reason.

“The Lake” from The October Country by Ray Bradbury

[thebooksremindus]

All at once the shark of dread that never deserted its patrol of Joe’s innards rose to the surface.

The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon

[thebooksremindus]

Like the Sun Belt or the Bible Belt, there exists, on this multifarious earth of ours, a Hair Belt.  It begins in southern Spain, congruent with Moorish influence.  It extends over the dark-eyed regions of Italy, almost all of Greece, and absolutely all of Turkey.  It dips south to include Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, and Egypt.  Continuing on (and darkening in color as maps do to indicate ocean depth) it blankets Syria, Iran, and Afghanistan, before lightening gradually in India.  After that, except for a single dot representing the Ainu in Japan, the Hair Belt ends. Sing, Muse, of Greek ladies and their battle against unsightly hair!  Sing of depilatory creams and tweezers!  Of bleach and beeswax!  Sing how the unsightly black fuzz, like the Persian legions of Darius, sweeps over the Achaean mainland of girls barely in their teens!

Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides

[thebooksremindus]

This is all, ultimately, a litany of madness—the colors of it, the sounds it makes in heavy nights, the chirping of it across the shoulder of the morning. Think of brief insanities that are in you, not just the ones that blossomed as you grew into taller, more sinful versions of yourself, but the ones you were born with, tucked behind your liver.

Freshwater by Akwaeke Emezi

[thebooksremindus]

Have a taco!

The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle

[thebooksremindus]

Hwoinch!

The Book of Three by Lloyd Alexander

[thebooksremindus]

Passion has little to do with euphoria and everything to do with patience. It is not about feeling good. It is about endurance. Like patience, passion comes from the same Latin root: pati. It does not mean to flow with exuberance. It means to suffer.

The Courage to Withstand by Daphne Kaplan (quoted in House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski)

[thebooksremindus]

I’m not trying to make this a downer, understand.  I mean, I really do think that love is the best thing in the world, except for cough drops.  But I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn’t fair.  It’s just fairer than death, that’s all.

The Princess Bride by S. Morgenstern (abridged by William Goldman)

[thebooksremindus]

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.

Northanger Abbey by Jane Austen

[thebooksremindus]

If you forget the direction time follows, there’s always love as a compass.  Time always abandons it.

Dictionary of the Khazars by Milorad Pavić

[thebooksremindus]

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz, or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off. I love you as certain dark things are to be loved, in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

“Sonnet XVII” by Pablo Neruda

[thebooksremindus]

Football was an arrangement of failures, a proving how unlikely most things were.

The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem

[thebooksremindus]

I’m not saying people don’t read fantasy; a whole lot of us people do; but our scholars and critics for the most part don’t read it and don’t know how to read it.  I feel shame for them.  Sometimes I feel rage.  I want to say to the literature teacher who remains willfully, even boastfully ignorant of a major element of contemporary fiction:  you are incompetent to teach or judge your subject.  Readers and students who do know the field, meanwhile, have every right to challenge your ignorant prejudice.  Rise, undergraduates of the English departments!  You have nothing to lose but your A on the midterm!

“The Critics, the Monsters, and the Fantasists” by Ursula K. Le Guin