best line in fiction-prose

what is? i dunno. gonna have to think about that. and i feel so bad because i probably wont be able to think of what is exactly my favorite. but heres a shot at it.

candidates:

no country for old men-"You think when you wake up in the mornin' yesterday don't count. But yesterday is all that does count. What else is there? Your life is made out of the days it’s made out of. Nothin else."

extremely loud and incredibly close-"Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living"

serena-"It’s ever been the way of the man of science or philosophy. Most folks stay in the dark and then complain they can’t see nothing.”

heart of darkness-"The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much."

everything wendell berry has ever written.-this is a cop out. so-"Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand; it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy." cant remember where this came from.

huck finn-"You don't know about me without you have read a book by the name of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; but that ain't no matter. That book was made by Mr. Mark Twain, and he told the truth, mainly. There was things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."

the myth of sisyphus-"there is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn."

the savage detectives-"Everything that begins as comedy ends as tragicomedy." love this full quote, where he talks about how he'd be under various dictators. but this is the kicker.

hitch hikers guide to the galaxy-"For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much - the wheel, New York, wars and so on - whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man - for precisely the same reasons."

the idea of nathan zuckerman sorry thats not a quote.

saturday-"When there are no consequences, being wrong is simply a diversion."

this is not going to end.

grapes of wrath- "It don't take no nerve to do somepin when there ain't nothin' else you can do."

faulkner-somewhere, he said hed rather choose pain than nothing. so wherever that appeared.

arg but there are so many obvious things not on here. hmm.

good country people- "Her voice when she spoke hand an almost pleading sound. 'Aren't you,' she murmured, 'aren't you just good country people?'...'Yeah,' he said, curling his lip slightly, 'but it ain't held me back none. I'm as good as you any day in the week.'"

the corrections-"The human species was given dominion over the earth and took the opportunity to exterminate other species and warm the atmosphere and generally ruin things in its own image, but it paid this price for its privileges: that the finite and specific animal body of this species contained a brain capable of conceiving the infinite and wishing to be infinite itself."

reckon ill leave it here. whats the best? hmm. what does that mean? most relevant to me? none are any more than another. concise? cogent? whatever. i dunno. what sounds the best right now, how about that? no i dont like that. what hits my chest like a freight train but draws me in?

first is probably huck finn, second savage detectives, third no country for old men. but these arent my favorite books, necessarily. and that huck finn quote isnt the most meaningful, but it sets that tone and setting that is so definitively american, you are made to read the novel in that voice. its great.

the bolano one. hard to isolate anything he wrote in a quote, because its just so wordy. but that bit makes a good job of it. what does it mean? its like bolano, you have no idea what hes saying, but you actually do. its not that its personal or anything like that, or even that its cryptic or esoteric. but actually its all three of those things. cant explain it. it just is.

no country for old men-the past, it matters.

that was fun.

musak