100 Worthwhile Works of Fiction

I went through and tallied up most all of my 4- and 5-star works of fiction, throwing in some lower-ranking offerings that still moved me and which I am glad I read, and made a list of them. 

Then, like a madman, I decided to provide an excerpt of each, to give a flavor of the offering. Here are 100 works of fiction I strongly recommend reading, presented simply alphabetically:

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain

“It was a close place. I took it up, and held it in my hand. I was a trembling, because I'd got to decide, forever, betwixt two things, and I knowed it. I studied a minute, sort of holding my breath, and then says to myself:

"All right, then, I'll go to hell"- and tore it up.

It was awful thoughts, and awful words, but they was said. And I let them stay said; and never thought no more about reforming. I shoved the whole thing out of my head; and said I would take up wickedness again, which was in my line, being brung up to it, and the other warn't. And for a starter, I would go to work and steal Jim out of slavery again; and if I could think up anything worse, I would do that, too; because as long as I was in, and in for good, I might as well go the whole hog.”

 

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

“'Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'

'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.

'I don't much care where--' said Alice.

'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.

'--so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.

'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.'”

 

All the King's Men - Robert Penn Warren

“The Boss himself used to go out to the poultry farm occasionally, to keep up appearances. Two or three times the papers–the administration papers, that is–ran photographs of him standing with his wife and kid in front of a hen yard or incubator house. The hens didn't do any harm, either. They gave a nice, homey atmosphere. They inspired confidence.”

 

"Arabian Nights"

“I praised God, whose name be exalted, and when the boat came to me, I found in it a man of brass, with a tablet of lead upon his breast, engraven with names and talismans. Without uttering a word, I embarked in the boat, and the man rowed me ten successive days, after which I beheld the islands of security, whereupon in the excess of my joy, I exclaimed: “There is no deity but God! God is most great!” – and as soon as I had done this, the man cast me out of the boat, and sank into the sea.”

 

Arcadia – Tom Stoppard

“We shed as we pick up, like travellers who must carry everything in their arms, and what we let fall will be picked up by those behind. The procession is very long and life is very short. We die on the march. But there is nothing outside the march so nothing can be lost to it. The missing plays of Sophocles will turn up piece by piece, or be written again in another language. Ancient cures for diseases will reveal themselves once more. Mathematical discoveries glimpsed and lost to view will have their time again. You do not suppose, my lady, that if all of Archimedes had been hiding in the great library of Alexandria, we would be at a loss for a corkscrew?”

 

Averno - Louise Glück

This is the moment when you see again
the red berries of the mountain ash
and in the dark sky
the birds’ night migrations.

 

It grieves me to think
the dead won’t see them–
these things we depend on,
they disappear.

 

What will the soul do for solace then?
I tell myself maybe it won’t need
these pleasure anymore;
maybe just not being is simply enough,
hard as that is to imagine.

 

The Bacchae - Euripides

“A man, a mortal, dares to struggle with a god!

I left him there. I walked out quietly to you.

Pentheus! What is he to me? I imagine he’ll be coming.

Listen to him tramping through the courtyard.

I’ll be patient: let him rage. Wise men

Know how to practice self-control.”

 

Beloved - Toni Morrison

“And O my people, out yonder, hear me, they do not love your neck unnoosed and straight. So love your neck; put a hand on it, grace it, stroke it and hold it up. and all your inside parts that they'd just as soon slop for hogs, you got to love them. The dark, dark liver--love it, love it and the beat and beating heart, love that too. More than eyes or feet. More than lungs that have yet to draw free air. More than your life-holding womb and your life-giving private parts, hear me now, love your heart. For this is the prize.”

 

Betrayal - Harold Pinter

“ROBERT: Ah, yes. I thought it might be something like that. Something along those lines.
EMMA: When?
ROBERT: What?
EMMA: When did you think?
ROBERT: Yesterday. Only yesterday. When I saw his handwriting on the letter. Before yesterday I was quite ignorant.
EMMA: Ah. (pause) I’m sorry.
ROBERT: Sorry? (silence) How long?
EMMA: Some time.
ROBERT: Yes, but how long exactly?
EMMA: Five years.”

 

Blindness - Jose Saramago

“Some drivers have already got out of their cars, prepared to push the stranded vehicle to a spot where it will not hold up the traffic, they beat furiously on the closed windows, the man inside turns his head in their direction, first to one side then to the other, he is clearly shouting something, to judge by the movements of his mouth he appears to be repeating some words, no one word but three, as turns out to be the case when someone finally manages to open the door, I am blind.”

 

Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

“‘What's this place called?’ He told me and, on the instant, it was as though someone had switched off the wireless, and a voice that had been bawling in my ears, incessantly, fatuously for days beyond number, had suddenly been cut short; an immense silence followed, empty at first, but gradually, as my outraged sense regained authority, full of a multitude of sweet and natural and long forgotten sounds: for he had spoken a name so familiar to me, a conjuror's name of such ancient power, that, at its mere sound, the phantoms of those haunted late years began to take flight.”

 

The Brothers Karamazov - Fyodor Dostoevsky

“What I now tell thee will come to pass, and our kingdom shall be built, I tell Thee not later than to-morrow Thou shalt see that obedient flock which at one simple motion of my hand will rush to add burning coals to Thy stake, on which I will burn Thee for having dared to come and trouble us in our work. For, if there ever was one who deserved more than any of the others our inquisitorial fires—it is Thee! To-morrow I will burn Thee.”

 

Buying a Fishing Rod for My Grandfather - Gao Xingjian

“It all felt so different from the time when we were graduates sent to work in the countryside. Now we were just visitors passing through, tourists, and the complicated relationships between the people here had nothing to do with us. Inevitably, this made us city dwellers feel somewhat superior. Fangfang clutched my arm tightly and I leaned close to her, and we could sense people’s eyes on us. But we didn’t belong to this town; we were from another world. We walked right past them, but they didn’t gossip about us; they only gossiped about the people they knew.”

 

Candide - Voltaire

“There is a chain of events in this best of all possible worlds; for if you had not been turned out of a beautiful mansion at the point of a jackboot for the love of Lady Cunegonde, and if you had not been involved in the Inquisition, and had not wandered over America on foot, and had not struck the Baron with your sword, and lost all those sheep you brought from Eldorado, you would not be here eating candied fruit and pistachio nuts.”

 

Children of Gebelawi - Naguib Mahfouz

“He dreamed about a magic future, although he was the one man who did not take hashish because his work in the back room needed wakefulness and attention.

But all this was nothing beside his mad desire to get into the Big House.

‘Why, my husband?’

‘To ask his advice about the way things should be.’”

 

The Clouds - Aristophanes

“SOCRATES. (from within). Hollo you! What are you doing, pray, you fellow on the roof?

STREPSIADES. I am walking on air, and speculating about the sun.

SOCRATES. Ah me, unhappy! I shall be suffocated, wretched man!

CHAEREPHON. And I, miserable man, shall be burnt to death!

STREPSIADES. For what has come into your heads that you acted insolently toward the gods, and pried into the seat of the moon? Chase, pelt, smite them, for many reasons, but especially because you know that they offended against the gods!

[The thinking shop is burned down.]”

 

The Crucible - Arthur Miller

“I want the light of God, I want the sweet love of Jesus! I danced for the Devil; I saw him, I wrote in his book; I go back to Jesus; I kiss His hand. I saw Sarah Good with the Devil! I saw Goody Osburn with the Devil! I saw Bridget Bishop with the Devil!”

 

Cuttlefish Bones - Eugenio Montale

“Don’t ask me for words that might define

our formless soul, publish it

in letters of fire, and set it shining,

lost crocus in a dusty field.

 

Ah, that man so confidently striding,

friend to others and himself, careless

that the dog day’s sun might stamp

his shadow on a crumbling wall!

 

Don’t ask me for formulas to open worlds

for you: all I have are gnarled syllables,

branch-dry. All I can tell you now is this:

what we are not, what we do not want.”

 

Darkness at Noon - Arthur Koestler

“The cause of the Party’s defectiveness must be found. All our principles were right, but our results were wrong. This is a diseased century. We diagnosed the disease and its causes with microscopic exactness, but whenever we applied the healing knife anew sore appeared. Our will was hard and pure, we should have been loved by the people. But they hate us. Why are we so odious and detested? We brought you truth, and in our mouth it sounded a lie. We brought you freedom, and it looks in our hands like a whip. We brought you the living life, and where our voices is heard the trees wither and there is a rustling of dry leaves.”

 

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich - Alexander Solzhenitsyn

“He ate his thin gruel with a worn old wooden spoon, and he took his time. He didn't bend down low over the bowl like all the others did, but brought the spoon up to his mouth. He didn't have a single tooth either top or bottom-he chewed the bread with his hard gums like they were teeth. His face was all worn-out but not like a goner's-it was dark and looked like it had been hewed out of stone. And you could tell from his big rough hands with the dirt worked in them he hadn't spent many of his long years doing any of the soft jobs. You could see his mind was set on one thing-never to give in. He didn't put his eight ounces of bread in all the filth on the table like everybody else but laid it on a clean little piece of rag that'd been washed over and over again.”

 

Death and the King's Horseman - Wole Soyinka

“JANE: Well, it is a little hot I must confess, but it’s all in a good cause.

OLUNDE: What cause Mrs. Pilkings?

JANE: All this. The ball. And his highness being here in person and all that.

OLUNDE (mildly): And that is the good cause for which you desecrate an ancestral mask?

JANE: Oh, so you are shocked after all. How disappointing.

OLUNDE: No I am not shocked Mrs. Pilkings. You forget that I have now spent four years among your people. I discovered that you have no respect for what you do not understand.”

 

Death Comes for the Archbishop - Willa Cather

“From the flat red sea of sand rose great rock mesas, generally Gothic in outline, resembling vast cathedrals. They were not crowded together in disorder, but placed in wide spaces, long vistas between. This plain might once have been an enormous city, all the smaller quarters destroyed by time, only the public buildings left—piles of architecture that were like mountains. The sandy soil of the plain had a light sprinkling of junipers, and was splotched with masses of blooming rabbit brush—that olive-colored plant that grows in high waves like a tossing sea, at this season covered with a thatch of bloom, yellow as gorse, or orange like marigolds.”

 

The Death of Ivan Ilych - Leo Tolstoy

“It occurred to him that he had not spent his life as he should have done. It occurred to him that his scarcely perceptible attempts to struggle against what was considered good by the most highly placed people, those scarcely noticeable impulses which he had immediately suppressed, might have been the real thing, and all the rest false. And his professional duties and the whole arrangement of his life and of his family, and all his social and official interests, might all have been false.”

 

Devil on the Cross - Ngugi wa Thiongo

“Wariinga turned to Gatuiria and asked him: ‘Is it possible that people dressed in such expensive suits could be real thieves and robbers?’

‘I don’t really know what’s going on,’ Gatuiria replied.

‘They are thieves! Of course they are thieves!’ Wariinga said.

‘Modern thieves,’ Muturi added.

‘Those foreigners have very red skins,’ Wariinga said, turning toward where the seven foreign thieves were sitting.”

 

The Divan - Hafez

“My body’s dust is a veil
Spread out to hide
My soul—happy that moment when
It’s drawn aside!

 

To cage a songbird with so sweet
A voice is wrong—
I’ll fly to paradise’s garden
Where I belong.

 

But why I’ve come and whence I came
Is all unclear—
Alas, to know so little of
My being here!

 

How can I make my journey to
My heavenly home
When I’m confined and cramped within
This flesh and bone?

 

If my blood smells of longing, show no
Astonishment—
Mine is the musk deer’s pain as he
Secretes his scent.

 

Don’t think my golden shirt is like
A candle’s light—
The true flame burns beneath my shirt,
Hidden from sight.

 

Come, and ensure Hafez’s being
Will disappear—
Since You exist, no one will hear
Me say, ‘I’m here.’”

 

Don Quixote - Cervantes

“‘Chance has conducted our affairs even better than we could either wish or hope for; look there, friend Sancho, and behold thirty or forty outrageous giants, with whom I intend to engage in battle, and put every soul of them to death, so that we may begin to enrich ourselves with their spoils; for it is a meritorious warfare, and serviceable both to God and man, to extirpate such a wicked race from the face of the earth.’

‘What giants do you mean?’ said Sancho Panza in amaze.

‘Those you see yonder,’ replied his master, ‘with vast extended arms; some of which are two leagues long.’

‘I would your worship would take notice,’ replied Sancho, ‘that those you see yonder are no giants, but windmills; and what seem arms to you, are sails; which being turned with the wind, make the mill-stone work.’

‘It seems very plain,’ said the knight, ‘that you are but a novice in adventures: these I affirm to be giants; and if thou art afraid, get out of the reach of danger, and put up thy prayers for me, while I join with them in fierce and unequal combat.’”

 

Duino Elegies - Rainer Maria Rilke

“Oh, and the night, the night, when the wind full of space

wears out our faces – whom would she not stay for,

the longed-for, gentle, disappointing one, whom the solitary heart

with difficulty stands before. Is she less heavy for lovers?

Ah, they only hide their fate between themselves.

Do you not know yet? Throw the emptiness out of your arms

to add to the spaces we breathe; maybe the birds

will feel the expansion of air, in more intimate flight.”

 

Eagle or Sun? - Octavio Paz

“Uncertainly, I enter. Corridors, doors that open on a hotel room, on an interjection, on an urban desert. And between the yawn and the sorrow, you, intact, foliage besieged by so much death, garden seen again tonight. Senseless and lucid dreams, geometry and delirium between high walls of adobe. The arbor of pines, eight witnesses to my childhood, always standing, never changing their posture, their dress, their silence. The pile of stones for the pavilion that the civil war kept unfinished, a place loved by melancholy and the lizards. The tall grasses with their secrets, their hot green softness, their crouching, terrifying bugs. The fig tree with its fables. The enemies: the magnolia with its white lamps in front of the pomegranate tree, candelabra of red jewels burning in the full sun. The quince and its elastic branches that drew sighs from the morning air. The rich white stain of the bougainvillea on the immaculate, so very white, wall. The sacred place, the infamous site, the corner of the monologue: the orphanage of an afternoon, the hymns of a morning, the silences, that day of a paradise glimpsed and shared.”

 

"Epic of Gilgamesh"

“Gazing into the valley
He felt overcome with pain
As a man
Who has been in prison
Feels his chains
At his release from fear.
He spoke Enkidu's name aloud
As if explaining to the valley
Why he was there, wishing his friend
Could see the same horizon,
Share the same delights: My friend Enkidu
Died. We hunted together, We killed Humbaba
And the Bull of Heaven. We were always
At each other's side, encouraging when one
Was discouraged or afraid or didn't
Understand. He was this close to me.
He held his hands together to describe
The closeness. It seemed for a moment
He could almost touch his friend,
Could speak to him as if he were there:
Enkidu. Enkidu. But suddenly the silence
Was deeper than before,
In a place where they had never been
Together.
He sat down on the ground and wept:
Enkidu.   Enkidu.”

Fences - August Wilson

“I been standing with you! I been right here with you, Troy. I got a life, too. I gave eighteen years of my life to stand in the same spot with you. Don't you think I ever wanted other things? Don't you think I had dreams and hopes? What about my life? What about me. Don't you think it ever crossed my mind to want to know other men? That I wanted to lay up somewhere and forget about my responsibilities? That I wanted someone to make me laugh so I could feel good? You not the only one who's got wants and needs. But I held on to you, Troy. I took all my feelings, my wants and needs, my dreams...and I buried them inside you.”

 

Flights - Olga Tokarczuk

“This is why tyrants of all stripes, infernal servants, have such deep-seated hatred for the nomads - this is why they persecute the Gypsies and the Jews, and why they force all free peoples to settle, assigning the addresses that serve as our sentences.
What they want is to create a frozen order, to falsify time's passage. They want for the days to repeat themselves, unchanging, they want to build a big machine where every creature will be forced to take its place and carry out false actions. Institutions and offices, stamps, newsletters, a hierarchy, and ranks, degrees, applications and rejections, passports, numbers, cards, elections results, sales and amassing points, collecting, exchanging some things for others.”

 

Flowers of Evil - Charles Baudelaire

“I want to write a book of chaste and simple verse,
Sleep in an attic, like the old astrologers,
Up near the sky, and hear upon the morning air
The tolling of the bells. I want to sit and stare,
My chin in my two hands, out on the humming shops,
The weathervanes, the chimneys, and the steepletops
That rise like masts above the city, straight and tall,
And the mysterious big heavens over all.

 

How good, to watch the fine mist of the night come on,
The windows and the stars illumined, one by one,
The rivers of dark smoke pour upward lazily,
And the moon rise and turn them silver. I shall see
The springs, the summers, and the autumns slowly pass;
And when old Winter puts his blank face to the glass,
I shall close all my shutters, pull the curtains tight,
To build my palaces of sorcery in the night.

 

Then I shall dream of the horizons beyond wide
Gardens that mount into blue air, kisses beside
Fountains that weep in alabaster, birds that sing
At dusk, at dawn — of every childish, idyllic thing.
The Insurrection, squalling vainly from below,
Will never cause my head to lift, I shall be so
Lost in that quiet ecstasy, the keenest still,
Of calling up the springtime at my own free will,
Of feeling a sun rise within me, fierce and hot,
And make a whole bright landscape of my burning thought.”

 

Frankenstein - Mary Shelley

“About two o’clock the mist cleared away, and we beheld, stretched out in every direction, vast and irregular plains of ice, which seemed to have no end. Some of my comrades groaned, and my own mind began to grow watchful with anxious thoughts, when a strange sight suddenly attracted our attention and diverted our solicitude from our own situation. We perceived a low carriage, fixed on a sledge and drawn by dogs, pass on towards the north, at the distance of half a mile; a being which had the shape of a man, but apparently of gigantic stature, sat in the sledge and guided the dogs. We watched the rapid progress of the traveller with our telescopes until he was lost among the distant inequalities of the ice.”

 

The French Lieutenant's Woman - John Fowles

“You may think novelists always have fixed plans to which they work, so that the future predicted by Chapter One is always inexorably the actuality of Chapter Thirteen. But novelists write for countless different reasons: for money, for fame, for reviewers, for parents, for friends, for loved ones; for vanity, for pride, for curiosity, for amusement: as skilled furniture makers enjoy making furniture, as drunkards like drinking, as judges like judging, as Sicilians like emptying a shotgun into an enemy's back. I could fill a book with reasons, and they would all be true, though not true of all. Only one same reason is shared by all of us: we wish to create worlds as real as, but other than the world that is. Or was.”

 

Go Tell It on the Mountain - James Baldwin

“He was invaded, set at naught, possessed. This power had stuck John, in the head or in the heart, and, in a moment, wholly, filling him with an anguish that he could not endure, that even now he could not believe, had opened him up; had cracked him open, as wood beneath the axe cracks down the middle, as rocks break up; had ripped him and felled him in a moment, so that John had not felt the wound, but only the agony; had not felt the fall, but only the fear; and lay here, now, helpless, screaming, at the very bottom of darkness.”

 

Grande Sertao: Veredas - Joao Rosa

“Nonought. Shots you heard weren’t a shootout, God be. I was training sights on trees in the backyard, at the bottom of the creek. Keeps my aim good. Do it every day, I enjoy it; have since the tendrest age. Anyhow, folks came a calling. Bout a calf: white one, strayling, eyes like no thing ever seen and a dog’s mask. They told me; I didn’t want to see. Seems it was defective from birth, lips curled back, and looked to be laughing, person-like. Human face, hound face: they decided—it was the devil. Oafenine bunch. They killed it. Nought a clue bout the owner. They came to beg my guns, I let em. I’m not superstitious. You got a way of laughing, sir . . . Look: when shots are for real, first the dogs set up barking that instant—then you go see if anyone’s dead. Don’t mind, sir, this is the sertão.”

 

The Great Enigma - Tomas Transtromer

“I drive through a village at night, the houses rise up
in the glare of my headlights—they're awake, want to drink.
Houses, barns, signs, abandoned vehicles—now
they clothe themselves in Life.—The people are sleeping:

some can sleep peacefully, others have drawn features
as if training hard for eternity.
They don't dare let go though their sleep is heavy.
They rest like lowered crossing barriers when the mystery draws past.

Outside the village the road stretches far among the forest trees.
And the trees the trees keeping silence in concord with each other.
They have a theatrical color, like firelight.
How distinct each leaf! They follow me home.

I lie down to sleep I see strange pictures
and signs scribbling themselves behind my eyelids
on the wall of the dark. Into the slit between wakefulness and dream
a large letter tries to push itself in vain.”

 

Hamlet - William Shakespeare

“To be, or not to be, that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die—to sleep,
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to: ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep.
To sleep, perchance to dream—ay, there’s the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come,
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.”

 

The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood

“She wasn’t singing anymore by then, she was making speeches. She was good at it. Her speeches were about the sanctity of the home, about how women should stay home. Serena Joy didn’t do this herself, she made speeches instead, but she presented this failure of hers as a sacrifice she was making for the good of all.

Around that time, someone tried to shoot her and missed; her secretary, who was standing right behind her, was killed instead. Someone else planted a bomb in her car but it went off too early.
Though some people said she'd put the bomb in her own car, for sympathy. That's how hot things were getting.
Luke and I would watch her sometimes on the late-night news. Bathrobes, nightcaps. We'd watch her sprayed hair and her hysteria, and the tears she could still produce at will, and the mascara blackening her cheeks. By that time she was wearing more makeup. We thought she was funny. Or Luke thought she was funny. I only pretended to think so. Really she was a little frightening. She was in earnest.

She doesn't make speeches anymore. She has become speechless. She stays in her home, but it doesn't seem to agree with her. How furious she must be, now that she's been taken at her word.”

 

Hunger - Knut Hamsun

“All of this happened while I was walking around starving in Christiania – that strange city no one escapes from until it has left its mark on him…”

 

Invisible Cities - Italo Calvino

“Marco Polo leafs through the pages; he recognizes Jericho, Ur, Carthage, he points to the landing at the mouth of the Scamander where the Achaean ships waited for ten years to take the besiegers back on board, until the horse nailed together by Ulysses was dragged by windlasses through the Scaean gates. But speaking of Troy, he happened to give the city the form of Constantinople and foresee the siege which Mohammed would lay for long months until, astute as Ulysses, he had his ships drawn at night up the streams from the Bosporus to the Golden Horn, skirting Pera and Galata. And from the mixture of those two cities a third emerged, which might be called San Francisco and which spans the Golden Gate and the bay with long, light bridges and sends open trams climbing its steep streets, and which might blossom as capital of the Pacific a millennium hence, after the long siege of three hundred years that would lead the races of the yellow and the black and the red to fuse with the surviving descendants of the whites in an empire more vast than the Great Khan’s.”

 

Journey to the West - Wu Cheng'en

“The conversation between teacher and disciple had disturbed the Great Sage, who shouted from under the roots of the mountain, ‘Who’s that up there?’ When she heard this the Boddhisatva hurried down the mountain to visit him. At the foot of the local mountainside the local gods, the mountain gods and the heavenly generals who were guarding the Great Sage all bowed to the Boddhisatva in greeting and took her to the Great Sage. She saw that he was pressed down inside a stone box, so that he could speak, but could not move his body. ‘Monkey,’ the Boddhisatva said, ‘do you know who I am?’”

 

Kaddish for a Child Not Born - Imre Kertesz

“‘No’ something screamed and howled within me immediately and spontaneously when my wife (incidentally she’s no longer my wife) first mentioned it – you – and my panic-stricken cramp has only slowly, after many long years, been quieted down into some general melancholy Weltschremz like Wotan’s violent rage at the famous farewell, until slowly and maliciously, like incipient sickness, a question within me assumed definite shape from the fleeting shades of northern lights.”

 

Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman

“A man’s body at auction,

(For before the war I often go to the slave-mart and watch the sale,)

I help the auctioneer, the sloven does not half know his business.

 

Gentlemen look on this wonder,

Whatever the bids of the bidders they cannot be high enough for it,

For it the globe lay preparing quintillions of years without one animal or plant,

For it the revolving cycles truly and steadily roll’d.

 

In this head the all-baffling brain,

In it and below it the makings of heroes.”

 

Life is a Dream - Calderon de la Barca

“And yet, and yet, in these our ghostly lives,

Half night, half day, half sleeping, half awake,

How if our waking life, like that of sleep,

Be all a dream in that eternal life

To which we wake not till we sleep in death?

How if, I say, the senses we now trust

For date of sensible comparison,—

Ay, ev'n the Reason's self that dates with them,

Should be in essence or intensity

Hereafter so transcended, and awake

To a perceptive subtlety so keen

As to confess themselves befool'd before,

In all that now they will avouch for most?”

 

Light in August - William Faulkner

“He looked like a tramp, yet not like a tramp either. His shoes were dusty and his trousers were soiled too. But they were of decent serge, sharply creased, and his shirt was soiled but it was a white shirt, and he wore a tie and a stiffbrim straw hat that was quite new, cocked at an angle arrogant and baleful above his still face. He did not look like a professional hobo in his professional rags, but there was something definitely rootless about him, as though no town nor city was his, no street, no walls, no square of earth his home. And that he carried his knowledge with him always as though it were a banner, with a quality ruthless, lonely, and almost proud. 'As if,' as the men said later, 'he was just down on his luck for a time, and that he didn’t intend to stay down on it and didn’t give a damn much how he rose up.'”

 

The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

“But I have been too deeply hurt, Sam. I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me. It must often be so, Sam, when things are in danger: some one has to give them up, lose them, so that others may keep them. But you are my heir: all that I had and might have had I leave to you.”

 

Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

“She loved the sea for its storms alone, cared for vegetation only when it grew here and there among ruins. She had to extract a kind of personal advantage from things and she rejected as useless everything that promised no immediate gratification — for her temperament was more sentimental than artistic, and what she was looking for was emotions, not scenery.”

 

Mahabharata - Vyasa

“Hearing these words, Sakuni ready with the dice, and adopting unfair means, said unto Yudhishthira, ‘Lo, I have won!’”

 

Memoirs of Hadrian - Marguerite Yourcenar

“Catastrophe and ruin will come; disorder will triumph, but order will too, from time to time. Peace will again establish itself between two periods and there regain the meaning which we have tried to give them. Not all our books will perish, nor our statues, if broken, lie unrepaired; other domes and pediments will rise from our domes and pediments; some few men will think and work and feel as we have done, and I venture to count upon such continuators, placed irregularly throughout the centuries, and upon this kind of intermittent immortality.”

 

Middlemarch - George Eliot

“When the two girls were in the drawing-room alone, Celia said—

‘How very ugly Mr. Casaubon is!’

‘Celia! He is one of the most distinguished-looking men I ever saw. He is remarkably like the portrait of Locke. He has the same deep eye-sockets.’

‘Had Locke those two white moles with hairs on them?’

‘Oh, I dare say! when people of a certain sort looked at him,’ said Dorothea, walking away a little.

‘Mr. Casaubon is so sallow.

‘All the better.’”

 

Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie

“I am not speaking metaphorically; nor is this the opening gambit of some melodramatic, riddling, grubby appeal for pity. I mean quite simply that I have begun to crack all over like an old jug—that my poor body, singular, unlovely, buffeted by too much history, subjected to drainage above and drainage below, mutilated by doors, brained by spittoons, has started coming apart at the seams. In short, I am literally disintegrating, slowly for the moment, although there are signs of acceleration. I ask you only to accept (as I have accepted) that I shall eventually crumble into (approximately) six hundred and thirty million particles of anonymous, and necessarily oblivious, dust.”

 

The Misanthrope - Moliere

“Betrayed and wronged in everything,
I’ll flee this bitter world where vice is king,
And seek some spot unpeopled and apart
Where I’ll be free to have an honest heart.”

 

Missing Person - Patrick Modiano

“‘I…I’ve been meaning to contact you for…a long time…’

‘What for?’

‘I am writing…writing a book about the Emigration…I…’

‘Are you Russian?’

It was the second time I had been asked this question. The taxi driver too had asked me. And, actually, perhaps I had been Russian.

‘No.’”

 

Moby Dick - Herman Melville

“Call me Ishmael. Some years ago—never mind how long precisely—having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world. It is a way I have of driving off the spleen and regulating the circulation. Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a damp, drizzly November in my soul; whenever I find myself involuntarily pausing before coffin warehouses, and bringing up the rear of every funeral I meet; and especially whenever my hypos get such an upper hand of me, that it requires a strong moral principle to prevent me from deliberately stepping into the street, and methodically knocking people’s hats off—then, I account it high time to get to sea as soon as I can.”

 

Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf

“Getting up rather unsteadily, hopping indeed from foot to foot, he considered Mrs. Filmer's nice clean bread knife with "Bread" carved on the handle. Ah, but one mustn't spoil that. The gas fire? But it was too late now. Holmes was coming. Razors he might have got, but Rezia, who always did that sort of thing, had packed them. There remained only the window, the large Bloomsbury-lodging house window, the tiresome, the troublesome, and rather melodramatic business of opening the window and throwing himself out. It was their idea of tragedy, not his or Rezia's (for she was with him). Holmes and Bradshaw like that sort of thing. (He sat on the sill.) But he would wait till the very last moment. He did not want to die. Life was good. The sun hot. Only human beings—what did they want?”

 

Native Son - Richard Wright

“‘I didn’t want to kill!” Bigger shouted. ‘But what I killed for, I am! It must’ve been pretty deep in me to make me kill! I must have felt it awful hard to murder…. What I killed for must’ve been good!’ Bigger’s voice was full of frenzied anguish. ‘It must have been good! When a man kills, it’s for something….’”

 

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

“I froze in shock. Then within a second or two, I began to feel a new kind of alarm, because I could see there was something strange about the situation. The door was almost half open – it was a sort of rule we couldn’t close dorm doors completely except for when we were sleeping – but Madame hadn’t nearly come up to the threshold. She was out in the corridor, standing very still, her head angled to one side to give her a view of what I was doing inside. And the odd thing was she was crying.”

 

1984 - George Orwell

“It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen. Winston Smith, his chin nuzzled into his breast in an effort to escape the vile wind, slipped quickly through the glass doors of victory Mansions, though not quickly enough to prevent a swirl of gritty dust from entering along with him.”

 

The Odyssey - Homer

“As they were thus talking, a dog that had been lying asleep raised his head and pricked up his ears. This was Argos, whom Ulysses had bred before setting out for Troy, but he had never had any work out of him. In the old days he used to be taken out by the young men when they went hunting wild goats, or deer, or hares, but now that his master was gone he was lying neglected on the heaps of mule and cow dung that lay in front of the stable doors till the men should come and draw it away to manure the great close; and he was full of fleas. As soon as he saw Ulysses standing there, he dropped his ears and wagged his tail, but he could not get close up to his master.”

 

Oedipus Rex - Sophocles

JOCASTA (white with terror): What does it matter
What man he means? It makes no difference now ...
Forget what he has told you ... It makes no difference.

OEDIPUS: Nonsense: I must pursue this trail to the end,
Till I have unraveled the mystery of my birth.

JOCASTA: No! In God's name -if you want to live, this
Must not go on. Have I not suffered enough?

OEDIPUS: There is nothing to fear. Though I be proved slave-born
To the third generation, your honor is not impugned.

JOCASTA: Yet do not do it. I implore you, do not do it.

OEDIPUS: I must. I cannot leave the truth unknown.

JOCASTA: I know I am right. I am warning you for your good.

OEDIPUS: My 'good' has been my bugbear long enough.

JOCASTA: Doomed man! O never live to learn the truth!

OEDIPUS: Go, someone; fetch the shepherd. Leave the lady
To enjoy her pride of birth.

JOCASTA: O lost and damned!
This is my last and only word to you
Forever!

Exit.

 

The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway

“For a long time after that everyone had called him The Champion and there had been a return match in the spring. Nut not much money was bet and he had won quite easily since he had broken the confidence of the negro from Cienfuegos in the first match. After that he had a few matches and then no more. He decided that he could beat anyone if he wanted to badly enough and he decided that it was bad for his hand for fishing.”

 

Omeros - Derek Walcott

“Back in a Brookline of brick and leaf-shaded lanes

I lived like a Japanese soldier in World War

II, on white rice and spare ribs, and, just for a change,

 

spare ribs and white rice, until the Chinese waiter

setting my corner-table muttered my order

halfheartedly flashing the bedragonned menu.”

 

One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

“Then, for more than ten days, they did not see the sun again. The ground became soft and damp, like volcanic ash, and the vegetation was thicker and thicker, and the cries of the birds and the uproar of the monkeys became more and more remote, and the world became eternally sad.”

 

Outlaws of the Marsh - Shi Nai'an

“Li Kui who never twinkled his eyes in chopping off people's heads, paused and thought when he heard this. ‘Here am I trying to succour my old mother, and yet killing a man who supports his old mother. Heaven will not allow me to live if I do this. No! No! I will forgive this man.’”

 

Pale Fire - Vladimir Nabokov

“I was the shadow of the waxwing slain
By the false azure in the windowpane;
I was the smudge of ashen fluff -and I
Lived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.
And from the inside, too, I'd duplicate
Myself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:
Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glass
Hang all the furniture above the grass,
And how delightful when a fall of snow
Covered my glimpse of lawn and reached up so
As to make chair and bed exactly stand
Upon that snow, out in that crystal land!”

 

Pedro Paramo - Juan Rulfo

“This town is filled with echoes. It's like they were trapped behind the walls, or beneath the cobblestones. When you walk you feel like someone's behind you, stepping in your footsteps.”

 

People in the Summer Night - Frans Sillanpaa

“It would be out of place to say of a wanderer in the still, summer night, especially one who is alone, that he is in any way unhappy. If an isolated house, having taken its last inmate under shelter, is like a mother, then so is the whole expanse of the summer night with its earth and sky; in its embrace even the most unhappy mortal, at least if he is alone, will always rest in one way or another.”

 

Phedre - Racine

PHAEDRA. I reign! Shall I the rod of empire sway

When reason reigns no longer o’er myself?

When I have lost control of all my senses?

When ‘neath a shameful yoke I scarce can breathe?

When I am dying?

OENONE. Fly.

PHAEDRA. I cannot leave him.

 

The Plague - Albert Camus

“Whereas during those months of separation time had never gone quickly enough for their liking and they were wanting to speed its flight, now that they were in sight of the town they would have liked to slow it down and hold each moment in suspense, once the breaks went on and the train was entering the station. For the sensation, confused perhaps, but none the less poignant for that, of all those days and weeks and months of life lost to their love made them vaguely feel they were entitled to some compensation; this present hour of joy should run at half the speed of those long hours of waiting.”

 

Platero and I - Juan Ramon Jimenez

“The hilltop. The setting sun lies pierced by his own crystal spears, bleeding purple and crimson from every vein. Before his splendor the green pine grove is dulled, turns vaguely red; and from the flushed transparent grass and small flowers a penetrating and luminous essence emanates.

I stop entranced in the twilight. Platero, his black eyes turned to scarlet by the sunset, walks softly to a pool of crimson, violet, rose-colored waters; gently he sinks his mouth in these mirrors, which again become liquid at his touch; and there is a profuse passing of dark waters up his huge throat.

I know this place well; but the moment has changed it and made it portentous. At any moment an unearthly adventure may befall us, an abandoned castle may loom before us… Evening prolongs itself beyond itself, and the hour, imbued with the spirit of eternity, is infinite, peaceful, beyond sounding.

‘Come, Platero.’”

 

Play It as It Lays - Joan Didion

“By the end of a week, she was thinking constantly about where her body stopped and the air began, about the exact point in space and time that was the difference between Maria and other. She had the sense that if she could get that in her mind and hold it for even one micro-second, she would have what she had come to get. As if she had fever, her skin burned and crackled with a pinpoint sensitivity. She could feel smoke against her skin. She could feel voice waves. She was beginning to feel color, light intensities, and she imagined that she could be put blindfolded in front of the signs at the Thunderbird and the Flamingo and know which was which.”

 

Poems - Du Fu

The wagons rumble and roll,
The horses whinny and neigh,
The conscripts each have bows and arrows at their waists.
Their parents, wives and children run to see them off,
So much dust's stirred up, it hides the Xianyang bridge.
They pull clothes, stamp their feet and, weeping, bar the way,
The weeping voices rise straight up and strike the clouds.
A passer-by at the roadside asks a conscript why,
The conscript answers only that drafting happens often.”

 

Poems - Li Bai

“Last year we fought by the head-stream of the Sang-kan,
This year we are fighting on the Tsung-ho road.
We have washed our armor in the waves of the Chiao-chi lake,
We have pastured our horses on Tien-shan's snowy slopes.
The long, long war goes on ten thousand miles from home,
Our three armies are worn and grown old.

The barbarian does man-slaughter for plowing;
On this yellow sand-plains nothing has been seen but
blanched skulls and bones.
Where the Chin emperor built the walls against the Tartars,
There the defenders of Han are burning beacon fires.
The beacon fires burn and never go out,
There is no end to war.

In the battlefield men grapple each other and die;
The horses of the vanquished utter lamentable cries to heaven,
While ravens and kites peck at human entrails,
Carry them up in their flight, and hang them on the branches of dead trees.
So, men are scattered and smeared over the desert grass,
And the generals have accomplished nothing.

Oh, nefarious war! I see why arms
Were so seldom used by the benign sovereigns.”

 

Poems - Matsuo Basho

“Cold night: the wild duck,
sick, falls from the sky
and sleeps awhile.”

 

Poems - Paul Celan

“Ashglory behind

your shaken-knotted

hands at the threeway.

 

Pontic erstwhile: here,

a drop,

on

 

the drowned rudder blade,

deep

in the petrified oath,

it roars up.

 

(On the vertical

breathrope, in those days,

higher than above,

between two painknots, while

the glossy

Tatarmoon climbed up to us,

I dug myself into you and into you.)

 

Ash-

glory behind

you threeway

hands.

 

The cast-in-front-of-you, from

the East, terrible.

 

No one

bears witness for the

witness.”

 

Poems - Wang Wei

“Tall bamboo blaze in meandering emptiness:
kingfisher-green rippling streamwater blue.

On Autumn-Pitch Mountain roads, they flaunt
such darkness, woodcutters too beyond knowing.”

 

Poet in New York - Federico Garcia Lorca

“I was speaking that way.

I was speaking that way when Saturn stopped the trains

and the fog and the Dream and Death were looking for me.

Looking for me

where cattle with the little feet of a page below

and my body floats between contrary equilibrium.”

 

A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man - James Joyce

“Brother Michael was standing at the door of the infirmary and from the door of the dark cabinet on his right came a smell like medicine. That came from the bottles on the shelves. The prefect spoke to Brother Michael and Brother Michael answered and called the prefect sir. He had reddish hair mixed with grey and a queer look. It was queer that he would always be a brother. It was queer too that you could not call him sir because he was a brother and had a different kind of look. Was he not holy enough or why could he not catch up on the others?

            There were two beds in the room and in one bed there was a fellow: and when they went in he called out:

            —Hello! It's young Dedalus! What's up?

            —The sky is up, Brother Michael said.”

 

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

“Between him and Darcy there was a very steady friendship, in spite of great opposition of character. Bingley was endeared to Darcy by the easiness, openness, and ductility of his temper, though no disposition could offer a greater contrast to his own, and though with his own he never appeared dissatisfied. On the strength of Darcy's regard, Bingley had the firmest reliance, and of his judgment the highest opinion. In understanding, Darcy was the superior. Bingley was by no means deficient, but Darcy was clever. He was at the same time haughty, reserved, and fastidious, and his manners, though well-bred, were not inviting. In that respect his friend had greatly the advantage. Bingley was sure of being liked wherever he appeared, Darcy was continually giving offense.”

 

Ramayana - Valmiki

“Reflecting thus, his tail ablaze

As through the cloud red lightning plays,

He scaled the palaces and spread

The conflagration where he sped.

From house to house he hurried on,

And the wild flames behind him shone.

Each mansion of the foe he scaled,

And furious fire its roof assailed

Till all the common ruin shared:

Vibhishaṇ's house alone was spared.”

 

Recognition of Shakuntala - Kalidasa

KING. (looking at SHAKUNTALA. With plaintive joy). It is she. It is Shakuntala.

The pale, worn face, the careless dress,

The single braid,

Show her still true, me pitiless,

The long vow paid.

SHAKUNTALA. (seeing the king pale with remorse. Doubtfully). It is not my husband. Who is the man that soils my boy with his caresses? The amulet should protect him. 

BOY. (running to his mother). Mother, he is a man that belongs to other people. And he calls me his son.

KING. My darling, the cruelty I showed you has turned to happiness. Will you not recognize me?

 

The Red and the Black - Stendhal

“There was light; a night light was burning on the mantelpiece. He had not expected this new misfortune. As she saw him enter, Madame de Rênal got quickly out of bed. "Wretch!" she cried. There was a little confusion. Julien forgot his useless plans, and turned to his natural role. To fail to please so charming a woman appeared to him the greatest of misfortunes. His only answer to her reproaches was to throw himself at her feet while he kissed her knees. As she was speaking to him with extreme harshness, he burst into tears.”

 

Romance of the Three Kingdoms - Luo Guanzhong

“Beneath the smoke of the incense burning on the altar, they bowed their heads and recited this oath:
‘We three—-Liu Bei, Guan Yu, and Zhang Fei—-though of different families, swear brotherhood, and promise mutual help to one end. We will rescue each other in difficulty; we will aid each other in danger. We swear to serve the state and save the people. We ask not the same day of birth, but we seek to die together. May Heaven, the all-ruling, and Earth, the all-producing, read our hearts. If we turn aside from righteousness or forget kindliness, may Heaven and Human smite us!’”

 

Ruined - Lynn Nottage

“MAMA. Here. I saved you some groundnuts, professor.

CHRISTIAN. That’s all you saved for me?

MAMA. Be smart, and I’ll show you the door in one second. (Mama scolds him with her eyes.)

CHRISTIAN. Ach, ach…Why are you wearing my grandmama’s face? (Christian mocks her expression. Mama laughs and downs her beer.)

MAMA. You’re sure you don’t want a beer?

CHRISTIAN. You know me better than that, Cherie. I haven’t had a drop of liquor in four years.

MAMA. (teasing) It’s cold.

CHRISTIAN. Tst! (Christian crack open a few peanuts, and playfully pops them in his mouth.)”

 

Season of Migration to the North - Tayeb Salih

“Just like us they are born and die, and in the journey from the cradle to the grave they dream dreams some of which come true and some of which are frustrated; that they fear the unknown, search for love and seek contentment in wife and child; that some are strong and some are weak; that some have been given more than they deserve by life, while others have been deprived by it, but that the differences are narrowing and most of the weak are no longer weak.”

 

Segu - Maryse Conde

“Perhaps we ought to prepare ourselves in childhood for the destruction of our ambitions. Perhaps we should keep telling ourselves that life will never come up to our dreams. So reflected Tiekoro, faced with what he thought were the ruins of his young life.”

 

Selected Stories - Anton Chekhov

“In the hospital yard stands a small annex surrounded by a whole forest of burdock, nettles, and wild hemp. The roof is rusty, the chimney is half fallen down, the porch steps are rotten and over-grown with grass, and only a few traces of stucco remain. The front façade faces the hospital, the back looks onto a field, from which it is separated by the gray hospital fence topped with nails. These nails, turned point up, and the fence, and the annex itself have that special despondent and accursed look that only our hospitals and prisons have.”

 

Selected Stories - Edgar Allan Poe

“We were strolling one night down a long dirty street, in the vicinity of the Palais Royal. Being both, apparently, occupied with thought, neither of us had spoken a syllable for fifteen minutes at least. All at once Dupin broke forth with these words:

‘He is a very little fellow, that’s true, and would do better for the Theatre des Varietes.’

‘There can be no doubt of that,’ I replied, unwittingly, and not at first observing (so much had I been absorbed in reflection) the extraordinary manner in which the speaker had chimed in with my meditations.”

 

Senor Presidente - Miguel Asturias

“Covered in bits of paper, leather and rags, skeleton umbrellas, brims of straw hats, saucepans with holes in them, broken china, carboard boxes, pulped books, pieces of glass, shoes curled up by the sun, collars, egg-shells, scraps of cotton and food – the Zany went on dreaming. Now he saw himself in a large patio surrounded by masks; soon he realized they were the faces of people watching a cock-fight. The fight blazed up like paper in a flame. One of the combatants expired without pain before the spectators’ eyes, which were glazed in pleasure to see the curved spurs drawn out smothered in blood. A smell of brandy. Tobacco-stained spittle. Entrails. Savage exhaustion. Somnolence. Weakness. Tropical noon. Someone was tiptoeing through his dream so as not to wake him…”

 

Short Stories - Jorge Borges

“We, in a glance, perceive three wine glasses on the table; Funes saw all the shoots, clusters, and grapes of the vine. He remembered the shapes of the clouds in the south at dawn on the 30th of April of 1882, and he could compare them in his recollection with the marbled grain in the design of a leather-bound book which he had seen only once, and with the lines in the spray which an oar raised in the Rio Negro on the eve of the battle of the Quebracho. These recollections were not simple; each visual image was linked to muscular sensations, thermal sensations, etc. He could reconstruct all his dreams, all his fancies. Two or three times he had reconstructed an entire day. He told me: I have more memories in myself alone than all men have had since the world was a world. And again: My dreams are like your vigils.”

 

Short Stories - Franz Kafka

“The Traveler, by contrast, was very upset. Obviously the machine was breaking up. Its quiet operation had been an illusion. He felt as if he had to look after the Officer, now that the latter could no longer look after himself. But while the falling gear wheels were claiming all his attention, he had neglected to look at the rest of the machine. However, when he now bent over the Harrow, once the last gear wheel had left the Inscriber, he had a new, even more unpleasant surprise. The Harrow was not writing but only stabbing, and the Bed was not rolling the body, but lifting it, quivering, up into the needles. The Traveler wanted to reach in to stop the whole thing, if possible. This was not the torture the Officer wished to attain; it was murder, pure and simple.”

 

"Sir Gawain and the Green Knight"

“Sir Gawain was deep in slumber, and in his dream he vexed him much for the destiny that should befall him on the morrow, when he should meet the knight at the Green Chapel, and abide his blow; but when the lady spake he heard her, and came to himself, and roused from his dream and answered swiftly. The lady came laughing, and kissed him courteously, and he welcomed her fittingly with a cheerful countenance. He saw her so glorious and gaily dressed, so faultless of features and complexion, that it warmed his heart to look upon her.”

Sister, My Life - Boris Pasternak

“Sister my life burst forth today

In torrents of spring rain, everywhere.

But people in jewels are highly squeamish

And bite politely, like hidden vipers.

 

The older people have their reasons for this;

And without doubt, your reason is confused:

That the lawn and those eyes are lilac in the storm

And the horizons smell of damp mignonettes;

 

So in May, riding in the compartment of a train,

You read the schedules of local railroads

And find them more impressive than Holy Scripture

Or coach seats black with dust and weather;

 

Or that the squealing of the brakes can rouse

The quiet peasants drunk with local wine.

They bolt from their mattresses: ‘Is this my station?’

While the setting sun is my sole consolation.

 

Third warning, and the bell swims past

With pure apology: ‘Sorry, not here.’

The window shade descends on the dying sunset

And the steppe falls away between the footboard and the stars.

 

Winking and waking, someone still sleeps,

My believed still sleeps like a lovely mirage;

Meanwhile my heart, splashing along the platform,

Strews carriage doors over the steppe.”

 

Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut

“When the bombers got back to their base, the steel cylinders were taken from the racks and shipped back to the United States of America, where factories were operating night and day, dismantling the cylinders, separating the dangerous contents into minerals. Touchingly, it was mainly women who did this work. The minerals were then shipped to specialists in remote areas. It was their business to put them into the ground, to hide them cleverly, so they would never hurt anybody ever again.”

 

Sleepwalking Land - Mia Cuoto

“This song yes, indeed will be ours. The memory of a deeper root that they were unable to wretch out of us. All this will happen if we are able to rid ourselves of this time that has made animals out of us. Let us strive to die like the people we no longer are. Let the animal die that this world has turned us into.”

 

Teahouse - Lao She

“TANG THE ORACLE. The more chaos the better my business. Nowadays life and death are a matter of luck. More and more people want their fortunes told, their features read. You understand?

WANG LIFA. Well, that’s one way of looking at it!

TANG THE ORACLE. I hear you’ve converted the courtyard into a boarding house. What about renting me a room?

WANG LIFA. Now, Mr. Tang, with that addiction of yours, don’t you think…?

TANG THE ORACLE. I’ve given up opium.

WANG LIFA. What! Then you’ll be able to make something of yourself!

TANG THE ORACLE. I’ve taken up heroin instead.”

 

Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair - Pablo Neruda

“What does it matter that my love could not keep her.
The night is starry and she is not with me.

This is all. In the distance someone is singing. In the distance.
My soul is not satisfied that it has lost her.

My sight tries to find her as though to bring her closer.
My heart looks for her, and she is not with me.

The same night whitening the same trees.
We, of that time, are no longer the same.”

 

The Underground Railroad - Colson Whitehead

“If you want to see what this nation is all about, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you’ll find the true face of America. It was a joke, then, from the start. There was only darkness outside the windows on her journeys, and only ever would be darkness.”

 

Waiting for Godot - Samuel Beckett

ESTRAGON. Charming spot. (He turns, advances to front, halts facing auditorium.) Inspiring prospects. (He turns to Vladimir.) Let's go.

VLADIMIR. We can't.

ESTRAGON. Why not?

VLADIMIR. We're waiting for Godot.

ESTRAGON (despairingly). Ah! (Pause.) You're sure it was here?

VLADIMIR. What?

ESTRAGON. That we were to wait.

VLADIMIR. He said by the tree. (They look at the tree.) Do you see any others?

ESTRAGON. What is it?

VLADIMIR. I don't know. A willow.

ESTRAGON. Where are the leaves?

VLADIMIR. It must be dead.

ESTRAGON. No more weeping.

VLADIMIR. Or perhaps it's not the season.

ESTRAGON. Looks to me more like a bush.

VLADIMIR. A shrub.

ESTRAGON. A bush.

VLADIMIR. A—. What are you insinuating? That we've come to the wrong place?

ESTRAGON. He should be here.

VLADIMIR. He didn't say for sure he'd come.

ESTRAGON. And if he doesn't come?

VLADIMIR. We'll come back tomorrow.

ESTRAGON. And then the day after tomorrow.

VLADIMIR. Possibly.

ESTRAGON. And so on.

VLADIMIR. The point is—

ESTRAGON. Until he comes.

VLADIMIR. You're merciless.