The well-turned phrase

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

In a training session for the teachers at my school, we were talking about elements of good writing (with an eye to how to teach them to children) and one of the things we agreed on was unusual words or original ways of putting things. One of my teachers is going through the Newbery Medal winners, starting with the first one, and when she got to GAY NECK: THE STORY OF A PIGEON, she was telling me one phrase that she absolutely loved: "sapphire intangibility" (describing the sky). I know there have been many phrases that have struck me in books that I've read, and I've decided to start gathering them, from other teachers and from myself, and posting them on the walls where children can read them.

So, tell me: What are some phrases or sentences (nothing longer than a sentence) that you find memorable? Mostly from Thief, QoA, and KoA, but any other books, too. (If you're like me, the minute you try to remember them you'll find you can't, but do persevere).

Comments

[fabricalchemist.livejournal.com]

OMG BEST POST EVER.

"his oaths cut him like fine wire" -- out of Tithe. Actually, almost anything Holly Black, she makes excellent descriptive phrases that stick in my head.

and Mervyn Peake, talking about "turbulent toast" and "the beat of a cakey heart" (a romance poem for cake?!) was lol tastic. Mervyn Peake in general is good for overwhelmingly adjective-tastic-ness, but I say this a lot so I'll just get out of everyone else's way now XD

[cleo]

"Outside a weather of stars ran clear in the ocean of sky." ~Ray Bradbury, Something Wicked This Way Comes

"Then in the middle of the empty air behind everybody, butterflies suddenly crossed and circled each other, their wings digging and flashing like dueler's swords in the vacuum." ~Eudora Welty, "June Recital"

Those are the two that I can think of immediately off hand. I'm a big fan of authors that take the simplest words and make something utterly beautiful out of them.

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

"glassy cool translucent wave" (from Comus, by Milton) (via one of Antonia Forest's books)

"Is it not passing brave to be a king, And drive in triumph through Persepolis?" (from Tamurlaine, by Christopher Marlowe)

And some poetry

[cleo]

"And as I ascend on high, life appears to me
just like a lullaby." ~a poetic translation of a German poem of which I have forgotten the title.

"One sun by day, by night ten thousand shine." ~Young

"And what if all animated nature
Be but organic harps diversely framed,
That tremble into thought, as o'er them sweeps
Plastic and vast, one intellectual breeze,
And once the soul of each, and God of All?"
~Coleridge from "The Eolian Harp"

[karatelunch.livejournal.com]

"What is that quality in us, do you think? That makes us cause our own rain and smoke?"

"The blue mountains beyond, the out of focus world: beautiful."

-Anil's Ghost, Michael Ondaatje

[kilerkki.livejournal.com]

From Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn, my favorite lines of description ever (about a harpy):

"She glittered, but to look at her was to feel the light going out of the sky."

"A bloodshot moon burst out of the clouds, and the unicorn saw her—swollen gold, her streaming hair kindling, the cold, slow wings shaking the cage. "

"...and out of the wreckage the harpy bloomed, terrible and free, screaming, her hair swinging like a sword. The moon withered and fled."

[twtd]

"but you & I will bewail it together when we meet, for I cannot weep upon paper."
-James Kirkpartick in a letter to his grandaughter.

The depth of emotion just floors me every time that I read it.

From "The Squire's Tale" by Gerald Morris

[erudaughter.livejournal.com]

"First, he stumbled over an ancient tree stump, which squatted in the center of a path that had been clear just the day before. When he picked himself up and turned to examine the stump, it was gone. the wind in the trees sounded suspiciously like someone chuckling."

[mycenaeth.livejournal.com]

As a whole, the entirety of Patrick O'Brian's novels, written in 1800's english blows me away. That a modern man could so perfectly capture the language of that time is so amazing. I find my self talking 'old-fashioned' for hours after picking up his books. That manner of speaking was so elegant, so refined...

Here is a poem, which O'Brian took from naval newspapers of the day and attributed to his character Mr. Mowett:

By woe, the soul to daring action swells;
By woe, in plaintless patience it excels:
From patience, prudent clear experience springs
And traces knowledge through the course of things;
Thence hope is formed, thence fortitude, success,
Renown - whate'er men covet and caress.

But it is not the poetry that strikes me in these books, but rather the plain 'sailor's english' such as when a grizzled sailor, Preserved Killick, acting as the captain's steward proclaims the following.

"Thankee, sir. Captain's compliments and whenever Dr. Maturin has the leisure and inclination for a little more music, would welcome his company in the cabin,. Which he is a-tuning of his old fiddle this minute, sir."

This use of 'which' fascinates me, and I find myself using it in my own sentences. I love it!

The Aged Crone, more in sorrow than in anger, says...

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

Ahem ahem ahem ahem. ONE phrase, people, or ONE sentence!!!! No fair posting whole passages or poems! : )

[traboule.livejournal.com]

"No one on the verge of death has the strength to pile one foul word on top of another like a man compiling a layered pastry of obscene language." KoA. I love this one. Just - the care in describing exactly how Gen puts together what we learn later is a rather elaborate performance.
Also, Attolia's wonderful acceptance at the end of QoA - "Do you know what my answer is?" "Yes." "Yes." Love this one too.

I've always been weirdly comforted by a Lymond line, when one rather severe character says to a very emotionally distraught character, "You are not going to fall." Given that he's basically in shock at this point, it proves highly effective but there's a certain weight to the phrase which makes it memorable out of context as well.

Neil Gaiman is excessively memorable - I think about half of what he writes is presented as tidy, witty epigrams. Things like, "I lost some time one...it's always the last place you look for it."

Lord Peter's "They can keep the harmony as long as they leave us the counterpoint" is at top of my list of sappy romantic quotes (well, maybe the world's greatest alternative marriage proposal is top top), which seem to be mostly what I remember.

This is a neat post - a bonus While She Knits...or at least, it's doing that to my Need to Read list. More books! More books that aren't class-related!

[jesusphreaq.livejournal.com]

Far above us the bowl of heaven was blue enough to fall into.
Ellen Kushner, "Thomas the Rhymer."

All around them now was the holy forest.
Michael Ondaatje, The English Patient.

[rosaleeluann.livejournal.com]

This isn't from a book, but...

My English teacher has an amazingly HUGE vocabulary, and he uses it. The other day, for some reason we were talking about social security and the lengthening of life, yadda yadda yadda, and he used the phrase 'decrepit senescence' (What he actually said was "You know, I'm kinda looking forward to my decrepit senescence...). I don't think this is exactly the type of phrase you had in mind, but its the first one that I thought of... *shrug*

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

"Suddenly for no earthly reason I felt immensely sorry for him and longed to say something real, something with wings and a heart, but the birds I wanted settled on my shoulders and head only later when I was alone and not in need of words."
Nabokov, The Real Life of Sebastian Knight.

I could do Nabokov all day, but I'll just leave you that one.

[estarria.livejournal.com]

From QoA, I've always liked where it says "Attolia took her eyes off the future to focus on Eddis." I'm sure there are more, but I can't remember them yet.

And other quotes...

"You, madam, are the eternal humorist,
The eternal enemy of the absolute,
Giving our vagrant moods the slightest twist!"
-"Conversation Galante" by T.S. Eliot

If I started listing all the Eliot lines I liked this would be an awfully long post, but the one in my icon is another one (from "Ash Wednesday").

"Then there were three there, making a dim row,
The moon, the little silver cloud, and she."
-"The Death of the Hired Man" by Robert Frost

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

Randomly:

"I will stay among the dead, singing my immense song." Ainadamar (David Henry Hwang, librettist) [I seem to like the word immense]

In Pagan's Scribe (Catherine Jinks), Lord Roland is described as moving "with a kind of controlled vigor." Just read that yesterday and oohed.

"...the pupils would stare at Mr. Brett and Mr. Brett would stare at the pupils, and each would be struggling with his private thoughts of the other, and only God Almighty knew which was nearer the truth." Leon Garfield, The Strange Affair of Adelaide Harris.

"Although she didn't know it, the most dangerous part of her life was over. She was to miss it, badly." Robert Westall, Blitzcat.

And of course: "...he was normally as happy as only a fluffy-minded man with excellent health and a large income can be." P.G.Wodehouse, Leave it to Psmith.

[estarria.livejournal.com]

Two quotes from Fool's Errand by Robin Hobb:

"All of this existence was composed of trivial pains and searing agonies, and each of them was yet another mask between me and the face of the eternal."

"...You should know by now that every moment of my life is spent dancing. And with every partner, I tread a different measure."

And I can't believe I'd forgotten about this one from QoA:

"Attolia stood, caught at the threshold like one who has trespassed on the mysteries and been turned to stone."

[inconceivablelf.livejournal.com]

"the single-minded pragmatism of the Outlander psyche"
It's from the Blue Sword, by Robin Mckinely. it's been stuck in my head for years now.

[aged-crone.livejournal.com]

And, of course: "The queen was settling on the edge of the bed, ungainly with hesitation and at the same time exquisite in her grace, like a heron landing in a treetop."

[philia-fan.livejournal.com]

Checkers found this for me -- I remembered it from Middlemarch: "What we call despair is often only the painful eagerness of unfed hope."

[bluestalking.livejournal.com]

I second of the KoA Layer Pastry Of Obscenity, and offer, too, "He could be laid out by a toddler with a toasting fork." My friends and I revere that line greatly.

Sadly I don't have my books, being so far from home, so this might be slightly off--but in a letter to the woman he loved and never married, Keats ended something thusly:

"I will call you Venus, and pray, pray, pray to your star like a heathen."

I'm a sucker for the ending of Shakespeare's Marriage of True Minds sonnet, too:

"If this be error and upon me proved/ I never writ, nor no man ever loved."

And I also, for some reason, am extremely fond of this small and flighty bit from "The Waste Land" (Eliot):

"O O O O that Shakespeherian rag--/It's so elegant/So intelligent..."