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((Extracts from books that have caught my eye. Add some of yours - from books, song, movies, whatever))


"-Anybody can look at a pretty girl and see a pretty girl. An artist can look at a pretty girl and see the old woman she will become. A better artist can look at an old woman and see the pretty girl she used to be. But a great artist - a master - and that is what Auguste Rodin was - can look at an old woman, portray her exactly as she is ... and force the viewer to see the pretty girl she used to be ... and more than that, he can make anyone with the sensitivity of an armadillo, or even you, see that this lovely young girl is still alive, not old and ugly at all, but simply prisoned inside her ruined body. He can make you feel the quiet, endless tragedy that there was never a girl born who ever grew older than eighteen in her heart ... no matter what the merciless hours have done to her-"

Stranger In A Strange Land ~ Robert A Heinlein

The statue being dicussed - She Who Used to Be the Beautiful Heaulmiere

..."Before the war I had seen a lot of death. You get used to dead bodies , working on a farm. you never like it; sometimes it makes you sick, sometime you rage against it, sometimes you mourn for days afterwards. But you get used to the ewes killed by foxes as they're giving birth; the lambs with thier eyes plucked out by crows; the dead cows who are bloated with gas thill they look like they might float away. you see mxyo'd rabbits, roos caught in fence wire, tortises that you've run over with the tractor when you're down at the creek filling the furphy. you see ugly death, dry death, quiet death, death full of pain and spit and blood, intestines torn out with flies laying maggots in them.
...
Chris's body was different. It should have been like the others, like the corpses of animals. He'd been there a few weeks, like they often were before anyone noticed them. Like them he had been attacked by predators: foxes, feral cats, crows, who knows Like them the earth around him told the story of his death: he lay ten metres from the overturned ute, and the rain had not been able to rub out the marks that his hands had made as he gouged at the soil. You could see where he'd been thrown, how ar he'd crawled, and you could tell he'd lain there a day or more, waiting to die. His face still stared at the dky; his empty eye sockets gazed up as if searching for the stars he could no longer see; his mouth was locked open in an animal snarl; and his back was arched in agony.
...
It was ahrd to think though that from this body and inside this hea had once some wonderful messages. This stinking ugly body had once written 'Stars love clear sky. They shine.'
...
'They will carry me to the field
Through the wreaths of mist
Moist on my face,
And the lamb will pause
For a thoughtful stare,
The soldiers, they will come.
They will lay me down in the dark cold arth
And push the clods in upon my face.'"

The Dead Of The Night ~ John Marsden.

I'm in the mood to post today - and nobody's bloody on!
I've already spammed LJ, so now I'm here instead.

"...'No one keeps where I do not want to be. But freedom is not a matter of that. You are a gypsy, so you think freedom is only the freedom to move from place to place. Real freedom is a thing no one can take from you, because it is a freedom of the spirit. I keep it here.' He tapped his head..."

The Farseekers ~ Isobelle Carmody.

Thanks. They're just passages that catch my eye when I'm reading. I tend to put them here so I don't spam the hell out of my LJ biggrin

"... There was something he had to know. Bill Door had ben curious about things, and he could remember everything about being Bill Door. He could look at emotions laid out like butterflies pinned on cork, under glass.
Bill Dor was dead, or at least had ceased his brief existence. But - what was it? - someone's actual life was only the core of their real existence? Bill Door had gone, but he had left echoes. The memory of Bill Door was owed something...

"... The journey took an instant that would have taken mere light three hundred million years, but Death travels inside that space where Time has no meaning. Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkenss has always got there first, and it waiting for it ...

"...Beyond, to the mountains, was unformed land - it would bear weight, it had an existence of sorts, but there had never been any reason to define it further.
Until now, anyway ...
I REMEMBER WHEN ALL THIS WAS STARS
What was it? Oh, yes ..
He snapped his fingres. Fields appeared, following the gentle curves of the land ...
Death shook his head. It wasn't quite right yet.Then he realise what it was. The lifetimers, the great room filled with the roar of disappearing lives, was effecient and necessary; you need something like that for good order. But ...
He snapped his fingers again and a breeze sprang up. The cornfields moved, billow after billow unfolding across the slopes ...
Death stood alone, watching the wheat dance in the wind. Of course, it was only a metapor. People were more than corn. They whirled through tiny crowded lives, driven literally by clock work, filling their days from edge to edge with the sheer effort of living. And all lives were exactly the same length. Even the very long and very short ones. From the point of veiw of eternity, anyway."

From 'Reaper Man' by Terry Pratchett. Creator of the most fascinating character of them all - Death.

~ These kinda make you think.... ~

"...'Ah,' said Susan dully. 'Trickery with words. I would have thought you'd have been more literal-minded than that.'
I AM NOTHING IF NOT LITERAL-MINDED. TRICKERY WITH WORDS IS WHERE HUMANS LIVE.
'All right,' said Susan. 'I'm not stupid. You're saying that humans need ... fantasies to make life bearable.'
REALLY? AS IF IT WAS SOME KIND OF PINK PILL? NO. HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
'Tooth fairies? Hogfathers? Little-'
YES. AS PRACTICE. YOU HAVE TO START OUT LEARNING TO BELIEVE THE LITTLE LIES.
'So we can believe the big ones?'
YES. JUSTICE. MERCY. DUTY. THAT SORT OF THING.
'They're not the same at all!'
YOU THINK SO? THEN TAKE THE UNIVERSE AND GRIND IT DOWN TO THE FINEST POWDER AND SIEVE IT THROUGH THE FINEST SIEVE AND THEN SHOW ME ONE ATOM OF JUSTICE, ONE MOLECULE OF MERCY. AND YET - Death waved a hand. AND YET YOU ACT AS IF THERE IS SOME IDEAL ORDER IN THE WORLD, AS IF THERE IS SOME ... SOME RIGHTNESS IN THE UNIVERSE BY WHICH IT MAY BE JUDGED..."

Hogfather ~ Terry Pratchett.

Congratualtions - you just summed up the entire Discworld universe in 2 small words blaugh