Top 5 Tuesday is a weekly meme hosted by the fantastic Bionic Bookworm. This week’s topic:
OCTOBER 17 – Top 5 book quotes
Narrowing down this list PAINED ME so think of these as my top 5 book quotes at this exact moment in time (8:54 pm on a Monday in October), because in ten minutes I’m sure I would have chosen a different selection. Also I’m not going to add my commentary to these, I’m just going to let them speak for themselves, but if there’s anything that needs clarifying or if you’re curious as to why any of these struck me, do let me know.
“It is an illusion that youth is happy, an illusion of those who have lost it; but the young know they are wretched for they are full of the truthless ideal which have been instilled into them, and each time they come in contact with the real, they are bruised and wounded. It looks as if they were victims of a conspiracy; for the books they read, ideal by the necessity of selection, and the conversation of their elders, who look back upon the past through a rosy haze of forgetfulness, prepare them for an unreal life. They must discover for themselves that all they have read and all they have been told are lies, lies, lies; and each discovery is another nail driven into the body on the cross of life.”
– W. Somerset Maugham, Of Human Bondage
“Now he got out of bed and wrapped his blanket around himself, yawning. That evening, he’d talk to Jude. He didn’t know where he was going, but he knew he would be safe; he would keep them both safe. He went to the kitchen to make himself coffee, and as he did, he whispered the lines back to himself, those lines he thought of whenever he was coming home, coming back to Greene Street after a long time away – “And tell me this: I must be absolutely sure. This place I’ve reached, is it truly Ithaca?”- as all around him, the apartment filled with light.”
– Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life
“If you show someone something you’ve written, you give them a sharpened stake, lie down in your coffin, and say, ‘When you’re ready’.”
— David Mitchell, Black Swan Green
“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
— Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
“He stood between death and life as between night and morning, and thought with a soaring rapture, ‘I am not afraid’.”
— Mary Renault, Fire From Heaven
What are your favorite quotes and what did you think of mine?? Comment and let me know!
THAT A LITTLE LIFE QUOTE!!! MY HEART!!!!
I love the rest of these, that last quote is so fantastic I want to like, print it out and put on my work computer right now lol. And that first one!! oh my!!
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If it weren’t weird to have like a paragraph long passage tattooed on your body I WOULD TOTALLY GET THAT ALL QUOTE AS A TATTOO IT IS EVERYTHING
Omg I know that Fire From Heaven quote is like?????? So much???? I feel inspired to lead men into battle hahahah. And Of Human Bondage is so painfully relatable from a millennial perspective which is like… wild as it was published in 1915.
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I want to host like, A Little Life party and it would be the most depressing yet bookishly indulgent thing ever. Everyone goes around and shares their favorite quotes until basically the whole book is read and everyone’s crying.
I love how relatable that quote is 100 years later….I feel every millennial could look at it and be like “yup”
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I can’t decide if that sounds like the best or worst party of all time. PROBABLY BOTH TBH. I’m both excited and terrified for the day we decide it is time for a re-read like WILL I EVER BE READY??
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I KNOW. Like on one hand I want to visit Jude and Willem again but on the other….DEATH!!
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UM I want to be at this ridiculously depressing yet amazing bookish party!!! And I’m so glad that when we eventually decide to re-read, we can all cry together!
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I’M GOING TO CRY SO HARD.
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I’ve never read Fire from Heaven but the quote you’ve chosen from it is absolutely beautiful!
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Isn’t it??? It is a ridiculously dense book that took me ages to get through but Renault’s prose is insanely good, every once in a while I’d get a passage like that and just go ‘WOW OK’
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Oooh sounds good, I might have to give it a try sometime, but maybe wait for summer or something if it takes a while! 🙂
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Yeah it’s definitely a great book to tackle when you’ve got a lot of free time (if you’re interested in Alexander the Great)!
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Haha, I won’t use it for any light reading then! But I do like trying to read new things during the summer holidays so we’ll see! 🙂
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Love this list!! A Little Life seems to be on EVERYONE’s list! I think that means that I need to read it. By the sounds of things it destroys everyone who reads it – basically I need it in my life! Adding to my wish list NOW!
Thanks so much for participating!
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A Little Life is literally the most painful and devastating book I have ever read but I love it SO MUCH. Just be aware that there’s like…. every possible trigger imaginable and it’s also relentlessly dark, but if that sounds like something you can handle I’m sure you’ll love it.
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[…] Rachel – Pace, Amore, Libri […]
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These are some powerful quotes. Definitely gives you a lot to think about.
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Ahhh I’m glad you liked them! Hahaha I know right I was like ‘why are all my quotes ridiculously cynical or tragic, am I doing this right.’
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Hahah! “Am I doing this right?” I mean they definitely leave you thinking, but I think the good ones often do so I totally support your choices! =D
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I LOVE THIS LIST, and I think the greatest part Is that every single one of those quotes is so wonderful that they make me want to read the books immediately. That Of Fire From Heaven quote wow, and the Of Human Bondage one is so #relatable. Of course that’s your A Little Life quote, could it possibly be more perfect? I just have a lot of feelings about all of these!!!
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WOW THIS IS V. HIGH PRAISE THANK YOU. Omg I can’t wait for you to read Of Human Bondage and Fire From Heaven!!! Both of their writing styles are insanely amazing. And omg that ALL quote DESTROYS ME……..
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Ughhh A Little Life ;~; It has so many good and heartbreaking quotes, I’m honestly in mourning every time I just think about that book.
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[…] this week, the Top 5 Tuesday prompt was Top 5 Book Quotes. Narrowing it down was pretty excruciating, so I wanted to make a post with some of the quotes […]
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[…] for this. I’ve actually done a couple of posts about my favorite quotes before – HERE and HERE – but those posts are from over a year ago, so for this tag I decided to focus on […]
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