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This week’s question might require you to really dig into your memory, but, if you’re an avid reader, I expect it won’t require too much work.
What line hit you harder than any other in fiction?
I’m talking about a line in a book that hit you so goddamn hard, it felt like you’d had the wind knocked out of you when you first read it. Extra points if you give me a little context about what was going on in your life that ensured it resonated that much with you.
My choice is—
"Get busy living or get busy dying."
—from Stephen King’s “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption”, published in 1982 in the author’s novella collection Different Seasons. I read this line back in my twenties when I was vacillating between various choices in my life, all of which seemed like the wrong ones. Wrong ones because I was too afraid to make the right ones.
By the way, if you’re a fan of The Shawshank Redemption film, I’ve written a new essay about why its adaptation of King’s novella is so masterful. You can read it here.
Thanks for reading 5AM StoryTalk! This post is public so feel free to share it.
"No one was with her when she died." ~Charlotte's Web. I was in middle school when I read this. How to explain the way my breath stopped and wouldn't resume right away. I understood everything in that moment. I knew the author was telling me, the reader, a real thing, and in a more true way than any religion or adult ever had up until that point. That we're all headed for the same fate, dying alone; and that time will always be shorter than we think so don't be stingy with the compliments. The most impactful story I've ever read is The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, but I can't boil the effect into any single sentence from the book.
The last line of Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises":
"Isn't it pretty to think so?"
If you haven't read the novel, Brett and Jake are star-crossed lovers in post-WWI Europe. She's a British aristocrat, he's an American expat who has been rendered permanently impotent by his war wounds. She sleeps with other men but considers Jake her one true love. She believes they could have been happy together for a lifetime. That line is his response. Heartbreaking, and a punch to the gut, because Jake's sad, cynical heart has been utterly broken.
Are they really soulmates? Or is their great love an illusion born of Jake's disability? Does true love even exist? What is going to happen to them? Hemingway leaves us hanging. It's such a great last line.
This is a bit long, but it’s from Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger. Nothing has ever shaken my faith and made me think deeply as much as this:
“A God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell--mouths mercy and invented hell--mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!”
HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
-- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather.
The entire sequence is fantastic, but it's a powerful statement about how humans make society up as we go along, and how important it is to tell the right stories to make sure it goes well.
I started to read Walden because of this quote. I didn't go further with it, sadly. But this quote often rings in my head in many situations so I try to avoid the pitfalls of life as much as possible.
“Change is an easy thing to decide and a difficult thing to do. The day to day struggle of it defeats people. Do not despair if old ways look good to you.”
I return to this line often when thinking of change. I think we can all relate to it.
First, Shawshank (movie, haven’t read the story yet) is absolutely amazing. It was the movie my parents said “wait till you’re a little older to watch that. You’ll thank me later” and they were right. I couldn’t care less about some film fans turning their noses up at it because it is #1 on IMDb and so they have to pretend to not like it. It’s a masterpiece.
To answer the prompt; it comes from the intro to my copy of East of Eden. In which they tell the story of (allegedly) Steinbecks icon he used to remind himself who he was and where he was headed. It had an image of a flying pig that said “ad astra per alas porci” or “to the stars on the wings of a pig”
That alone is great, but than Steinbeck described himself as “a lumbering soul but trying to fly”
There are two quotes from Howards End - one is shorter, one is a little longer. The shorter one is "there must be some closing of the gates after thirty if the mind is to become a creative force." I read the book once a year for seven years living in New York starting in my late twenties, and wish I'd heeded that advice. But the book is full of them (To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.") - about money, art, business, relationships - which is why I've read it so often. It asks some questions about living our lives, and that was something I felt deeply at the time in my life, but unsure how to go about it - but this one still rings true, even though it was written in 1910
Looking back on the past six months, Margaret realised the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty. Margaret hoped that for the future she would be less cautious, not more cautious, than she had been in the past.
So many…. But another one from King, first line of the first book in The Dark Tower series: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” Had me hooked right there.
Alfred Bester’s TYGER TYGER (published as THE STARS MY DESTINATION in the US) absolutely shattered all conceptions of pacing and imagination. I jaunted at that mnemonic and it still pops into my head at random moments.
Gully Foyle, the lowly Everyman who transcends himself, who survives through his pyrotastic rage, abases himself in his love for unreachable women, who transcends space time in a fiery burst of synesthesia! Māori moko on his face emerging incandescent when his emotions rise.
Just so much there that inspired me to try and strive within my own limitations. Death may be my destination, but why, the stars are there! Burning bright in the night!
Yeah, I think I just talked myself into rereading this book. Maybe follow it with THE DEMOLISHED MAN.
Both books deserve the HBO treatment. Throw money at them. All of the money!
See, this is the kind of line wasted on me until the last five or so years. It just creeps up on you, and then you read it again -- as you say, sad and simple -- and feel a kind of quiet rage about what you took for granted.
“I am your number one fan.” Misery by Stephen King - I read this when the book was published. It still has a creepy sounding tone that never leaves the mind.
“The true measure of a man is how he handles adversity.” The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk. Every chapter has a memorable quote.
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at stars.” Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde.
The author that I quote most often is Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorn Clemmens) and one of my favorites: “If you find a stray dog and make him prosperous, he will never bite you. That is the principle difference between dog and man.” In real life Twain adopted dogs and cats he found abandoned at train stations.
"After a while he sat in the road. He took off his hat and placed it on the tarmac before him and he bowed his head and held his face in his hands and wept. He sat there for a long time and after a while the east did gray and after a while the right and godmade sun did rise, once again, for all and without distinction." --the final lines of The Crossing, by Cormac McCarthy.
Hi Cole, I am cheating here this is from a certain tv series. “The thing about dreams Miss Murray, one may faultier, but to fail is to abandon them. This comes from a certain dark prince and can only really be said by one that has lived forever. It has really helped me on days I struggle with my dreams to never give up on them. Whoever wrote this I am very grateful. Regards Tracey
"I couldn't help wondering if that was what God put me on Earth for--to find out how much a man could take without breaking." -Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
"Clare was in that charmed part of her life when hope woke her up in the morning and put her feet in her shoes."
From the novel "Love Walked In" by Marisa de los Santos. However, I absolutely cannot remember anything else about the novel. Strange. But the line smacked me in the face and stayed with me forever apparently.
What a wonderful collection of comments. I'm slightly pressed to think of my own contribution - life can be like that sometimes - always on the hoof but it has to be 'A handbag?!'. Spoken by Lady Bracknell written by Oscar Wilde. This was when I first fully appreciated the potential of social mores to provide utter hilarity. Although 'The Importance of Being Earnest' is a play of course it is a work of fiction and a brilliant one at that. I contend that the work of this writer leaves most of his contemporaries by the way-side and laid the ground for many of the preoccupations that still persist no matter what we are told about modern times or attitudes changing.
My friend Louis Bayard has a new novel out about Wilde and his family called THE WILDES. Just released. He's joining me for one of my artist-on-artist conversations next week, but in the meantime, you should look his book up. It's quite wonderful and is getting a lot of glowing press!
"No one was with her when she died." ~Charlotte's Web. I was in middle school when I read this. How to explain the way my breath stopped and wouldn't resume right away. I understood everything in that moment. I knew the author was telling me, the reader, a real thing, and in a more true way than any religion or adult ever had up until that point. That we're all headed for the same fate, dying alone; and that time will always be shorter than we think so don't be stingy with the compliments. The most impactful story I've ever read is The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, but I can't boil the effect into any single sentence from the book.
Oh Christ, now *I'm* crying. I've read this book to both of my kids, and this line left me teary each time.
The last line of Hemingway's "The Sun Also Rises":
"Isn't it pretty to think so?"
If you haven't read the novel, Brett and Jake are star-crossed lovers in post-WWI Europe. She's a British aristocrat, he's an American expat who has been rendered permanently impotent by his war wounds. She sleeps with other men but considers Jake her one true love. She believes they could have been happy together for a lifetime. That line is his response. Heartbreaking, and a punch to the gut, because Jake's sad, cynical heart has been utterly broken.
Are they really soulmates? Or is their great love an illusion born of Jake's disability? Does true love even exist? What is going to happen to them? Hemingway leaves us hanging. It's such a great last line.
I have read this book, and I remember this line. It's devastating, yes!
This is a bit long, but it’s from Mark Twain’s Mysterious Stranger. Nothing has ever shaken my faith and made me think deeply as much as this:
“A God who could make good children as easily as bad, yet preferred to make bad ones; who could have made every one of them happy, yet never made a single happy one; who made them prize their bitter life, yet stingily cut it short; who gave his angels eternal happiness unearned, yet required his other children to earn it; who gave his angels painless lives, yet cursed his other children with biting miseries and maladies of mind and body; who mouths justice and invented hell--mouths mercy and invented hell--mouths Golden Rules, and forgiveness multiplied by seventy times seven, and invented hell; who mouths morals to other people and has none himself; who frowns upon crimes, yet commits them all; who created man without invitation, then tries to shuffle the responsibility for man's acts upon man, instead of honorably placing it where it belongs, upon himself; and finally, with altogether divine obtuseness, invites this poor, abused slave to worship him!”
What a brutal denouncement of Christianity, but, of course, religion in general.
HUMANS NEED FANTASY TO BE HUMAN. TO BE THE PLACE WHERE THE FALLING ANGEL MEETS THE RISING APE.
-- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather.
The entire sequence is fantastic, but it's a powerful statement about how humans make society up as we go along, and how important it is to tell the right stories to make sure it goes well.
Yes, this is good stuff. It really gets at my why I find art to be one of the most important aspects of human survival.
So many Pratchett quotes get me.
"Evil begins when you begin to treat people as things" from I Shall Wear Midnight is just so incredibly true.
“The only truth is music….Music blends with the heartbeat universe and we forget the brain beat.” — Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels
"Most men lead lives of quiet desperation"
I started to read Walden because of this quote. I didn't go further with it, sadly. But this quote often rings in my head in many situations so I try to avoid the pitfalls of life as much as possible.
It's a beautiful line.
From Through a Glass Darkly by Karleen Koen:
“Change is an easy thing to decide and a difficult thing to do. The day to day struggle of it defeats people. Do not despair if old ways look good to you.”
I return to this line often when thinking of change. I think we can all relate to it.
Good stuff. Thanks for sharing!
Lots of thoughts.
First, Shawshank (movie, haven’t read the story yet) is absolutely amazing. It was the movie my parents said “wait till you’re a little older to watch that. You’ll thank me later” and they were right. I couldn’t care less about some film fans turning their noses up at it because it is #1 on IMDb and so they have to pretend to not like it. It’s a masterpiece.
To answer the prompt; it comes from the intro to my copy of East of Eden. In which they tell the story of (allegedly) Steinbecks icon he used to remind himself who he was and where he was headed. It had an image of a flying pig that said “ad astra per alas porci” or “to the stars on the wings of a pig”
That alone is great, but than Steinbeck described himself as “a lumbering soul but trying to fly”
And that is what really knocked me out.
I really love Steinbeck's description of his creative journey here. Thanks for sharing.
There are two quotes from Howards End - one is shorter, one is a little longer. The shorter one is "there must be some closing of the gates after thirty if the mind is to become a creative force." I read the book once a year for seven years living in New York starting in my late twenties, and wish I'd heeded that advice. But the book is full of them (To trust people is a luxury in which only the wealthy can indulge; the poor cannot afford it.") - about money, art, business, relationships - which is why I've read it so often. It asks some questions about living our lives, and that was something I felt deeply at the time in my life, but unsure how to go about it - but this one still rings true, even though it was written in 1910
Looking back on the past six months, Margaret realised the chaotic nature of our daily life, and its difference from the orderly sequence that has been fabricated by historians. Actual life is full of false clues and sign-posts that lead nowhere. With infinite effort we nerve ourselves for a crisis that never comes. The most successful career must show a waste of strength that might have removed mountains, and the most unsuccessful is not that of the man who is taken unprepared, but of him who has prepared and is never taken. On a tragedy of that kind our national morality is duly silent. It assumes that preparation against danger is in itself a good, and that men, like nations, are the better for staggering through life fully armed. The tragedy of preparedness has scarcely been handled, save by the Greeks. Life is indeed dangerous, but not in the way morality would have us believe. It is indeed unmanageable, but the essence of it is not a battle. It is unmanageable because it is a romance, and its essence is romantic beauty. Margaret hoped that for the future she would be less cautious, not more cautious, than she had been in the past.
Well, you just made a strong argument for me putting HOWARD'S END on my reread list. And so I have. Thanks for sharing!
So many…. But another one from King, first line of the first book in The Dark Tower series: “The man in black fled across the desert, and the gunslinger followed.” Had me hooked right there.
Oh yeah, great opening sentence.
Yeah, Tess, that's a great opening sentence.
Gully Foyle is my name
And Terra is my nation.
Deep space is my dwelling place,
The stars my destination.
Alfred Bester’s TYGER TYGER (published as THE STARS MY DESTINATION in the US) absolutely shattered all conceptions of pacing and imagination. I jaunted at that mnemonic and it still pops into my head at random moments.
Gully Foyle, the lowly Everyman who transcends himself, who survives through his pyrotastic rage, abases himself in his love for unreachable women, who transcends space time in a fiery burst of synesthesia! Māori moko on his face emerging incandescent when his emotions rise.
Just so much there that inspired me to try and strive within my own limitations. Death may be my destination, but why, the stars are there! Burning bright in the night!
Yeah, I think I just talked myself into rereading this book. Maybe follow it with THE DEMOLISHED MAN.
Both books deserve the HBO treatment. Throw money at them. All of the money!
Brutal and beautiful.
“Time just gets away from us.”
― Charles Portis, True Grit
I think this is possibly the saddest and simplest line ever written. Brings tears to your eyes with every rereading of the book, as you get older.
See, this is the kind of line wasted on me until the last five or so years. It just creeps up on you, and then you read it again -- as you say, sad and simple -- and feel a kind of quiet rage about what you took for granted.
"For the love of God, Montressor!"
"Never get married." Purple Rain.
Cheater. That's not a book.
“It’s because I won’t ever get to drink another one, isn’t it?”
- The Road, Cormac McCarthy
(Coca-Cola scene)
This one is brutal, yes.
"The light of the moon was violent-walking along the street in it was like being in the sunlight." Paul Bowles in The Sheltering Sky
I haven't read this book. Thanks for sharing, Bradley.
I have Sting to thank for two of my adolescent obsessions: Jung & Paul Bowles, both cited on the Synchronicity album by The Police, circa 1983.
“Frodo Lives” - The Hobbit J. R. Tolkien
“I am your number one fan.” Misery by Stephen King - I read this when the book was published. It still has a creepy sounding tone that never leaves the mind.
“The true measure of a man is how he handles adversity.” The Caine Mutiny by Herman Wouk. Every chapter has a memorable quote.
“We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at stars.” Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde.
The author that I quote most often is Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorn Clemmens) and one of my favorites: “If you find a stray dog and make him prosperous, he will never bite you. That is the principle difference between dog and man.” In real life Twain adopted dogs and cats he found abandoned at train stations.
"I am your number one fan" is terrifying!
"After a while he sat in the road. He took off his hat and placed it on the tarmac before him and he bowed his head and held his face in his hands and wept. He sat there for a long time and after a while the east did gray and after a while the right and godmade sun did rise, once again, for all and without distinction." --the final lines of The Crossing, by Cormac McCarthy.
God, Cormac was amazing.
Hi Cole, I am cheating here this is from a certain tv series. “The thing about dreams Miss Murray, one may faultier, but to fail is to abandon them. This comes from a certain dark prince and can only really be said by one that has lived forever. It has really helped me on days I struggle with my dreams to never give up on them. Whoever wrote this I am very grateful. Regards Tracey
"I couldn't help wondering if that was what God put me on Earth for--to find out how much a man could take without breaking." -Kurt Vonnegut, Breakfast of Champions
Creepy voice: "Fatality."
‘Not all those who wander are lost’
thanks Gandalf and JRR Tolkien for that one 💕
LORD OF THE RINGS has a Bible's worth of lessons far more valuable than anything found in the Bible.
"Clare was in that charmed part of her life when hope woke her up in the morning and put her feet in her shoes."
From the novel "Love Walked In" by Marisa de los Santos. However, I absolutely cannot remember anything else about the novel. Strange. But the line smacked me in the face and stayed with me forever apparently.
Yeah, this is beautiful and painful. I understand why it's stayed with you! Thanks for sharing, Alana.
What a wonderful collection of comments. I'm slightly pressed to think of my own contribution - life can be like that sometimes - always on the hoof but it has to be 'A handbag?!'. Spoken by Lady Bracknell written by Oscar Wilde. This was when I first fully appreciated the potential of social mores to provide utter hilarity. Although 'The Importance of Being Earnest' is a play of course it is a work of fiction and a brilliant one at that. I contend that the work of this writer leaves most of his contemporaries by the way-side and laid the ground for many of the preoccupations that still persist no matter what we are told about modern times or attitudes changing.
My friend Louis Bayard has a new novel out about Wilde and his family called THE WILDES. Just released. He's joining me for one of my artist-on-artist conversations next week, but in the meantime, you should look his book up. It's quite wonderful and is getting a lot of glowing press!
That sounds wonderful!