The Writing Tutor's Literary Quotations

"A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 12:35:00 +0000

“It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time. Eckels’s mind whirled. It couldn’t change things. Killing one butterfly couldn’t be that important! Could it?”

("A Sound of Thunder" by Ray Bradbury)

The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:42:00 +0000

"So it came to pass that as he trudged from the place of blood and wrath his soul changed. He came from hot plowshares to prospects of clover tranquilly, and it was as if hot plowshares were not. Scars faded as flowers."

(The Red Badge of Courage by Stephen Crane, chapter 24)

The American by Henry James

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:06:00 +0000

"But it has nothing to do with you personally; it's what you represent."

(The American by Henry James, chapter III)

"The Haunted Boy" by Carson McCullers

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:22:00 +0000

"Hugh stood in the darkening yard after the sunset colors faded in the west and the wisteria was dark purple. The kitchen light was on and he saw his mother fixing dinner. He knew that something was finished; the terror was far from him now, also the anger that had bounced with love, he dread and guilt."

("The Haunted Boy" by Carson McCullers)

“Searching for Summer” by Joan Aiken

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 01:27:00 +0000

“It was years since the bombs had been banned, but still the cloud never lifted. Whitish gray, day after day, sometimes darkening to a weeping slate color or, at the end of an evening, turning to smoky copper, the sky endlessly, secretively brooded.”

(“Searching for Summer” by Joan Aiken)

A Passage to India by E.M. Forster

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 15:57:00 +0000

"Yet absence implies presence, absence is not non-existence."

(A Passage to India by E.M. Forster, chapter XIX)

“Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Wed, 01 Apr 2009 13:29:00 +0000

“He tried to think a little about the ballerinas. They weren’t really very good—no better than anybody else would have been, anyway. They were burdened with sashweights and bags of birdshot, and their faces were masked, so that no one, seeing a free and graceful gesture or a pretty face, would feel like something the cat drug in. George was toying with the vague notion that maybe dancers shouldn’t be handicapped. But he didn’t get very far with it before another noise in his ear radio scattered his thoughts.”

(“Harrison Bergeron” by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)

"Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 18:23:00 +0000

"The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal. They weren't only equal before God and the law. They were equal every which way. Nobody was smarter than anybody else. Nobody was better looking than anybody else. Nobody was stronger or quicker than anybody else. All this equality was due to the 211th, 212th, and 213th Amendments to the Constitution, and to the unceasing vigilance of agents of the United States Handicapper General."

("Harrison Bergeron" by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.)

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 15:46:00 +0000

"They were careless people, Tom and Daisy—they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made...."

(The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, chapter IX)

Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 13:35:00 +0000

"A breeze which had crossed a thousand miles of wheatlands bellied her taffeta skirt in a line so graceful, so full of animation and moving beauty, that the heart of a chance watcher on the lower road tightened to wistfulness over her quality of suspended freedom."

(Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, chapter 1)

Moby-Dick by Herman Melville

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:32:00 +0000

"Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago."

(Moby-Dick by Herman Melville, chapter 135)

Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:51:00 +0000

“Somewhere the saving and putting away had to begin again and someone had to do the saving and the keeping, one way or another, in books, in records, in people’s heads, any way at all so long as it was safe, free from moths, silverfish, rust and dry-rot, and men with matches.”

(Farenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury)

The Awakening by Kate Chopin

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Mon, 23 Mar 2009 14:12:00 +0000

“There came over her the acute longing which always summoned into her spiritual vision the presence of the beloved one, overpowering her at once with a sense of the unattainable.”

(The Awakening by Kate Chopin, Chapter XXX)

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 15:34:00 +0000

“Prejudices, it is well known, are most difficult to eradicate from the heart whose soil has never been loosened or fertilized by education: they grow there, firm as weeds among stones.”

(Jane Eyre by Charlotte Brontë)

The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 13:28:00 +0000

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, ‘This is what it is to be happy.’”

(The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath, Chapter 8)

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 21:11:00 +0000

“You’re given the form, but you have to write the sonnet yourself. What you say is completely up to you.”

(A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle)

The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Sun, 29 Jan 2006 15:13:00 +0000

“Every night when I go to bed I think, 'In the morning I will wake up in my own house and things will be back the way they were.' It hasn’t happened this morning, either."

(The Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood, Chapter 31)

The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 12:28:00 +0000

“You cannot be always torn in two. You will have to be one and whole, for many years. … I tried to save the Shire, and it has been saved, but not for me.”

(The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien, Book VI, Chapter 9)

Night by Elie Wiesel

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Sat, 28 Jan 2006 03:31:00 +0000

“Never shall I forget that nocturnal silence which deprived me, for all eternity, of the desire to live. Never shall I forget those moments which murdered my God and my soul and turned my dreams to dust.”

(Night by Elie Wiesel, Section 3)

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 17:31:00 +0000

“It is our choices, Harry, that show us what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

(Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by J.K. Rowling, Chapter 18)

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 14:26:00 +0000

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title.

(Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, Act II, Scene 2)

20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Wed, 25 Jan 2006 03:33:00 +0000

"The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the terrestrial globe. Its breath is pure and healthy. It is an immense desert, where man is never lonely, for he feels life stirring on all sides."

(20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, Chapter 10)

Oedipus Rex by Sophocles

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Tue, 24 Jan 2006 05:49:00 +0000

"No more shall ye behold such sights of woe, deeds I have suffered and myself have wrought; henceforward quenched in darkness shall ye see those ye should ne'er have seen; now blind to those whom, when I saw, I vainly yearned to know."

(Oedipus Rex by Sophocles)

The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Sun, 22 Jan 2006 02:54:00 +0000

"His friends were those of his own blood or those whom he had known the longest; his affections, like ivy, were the growth of time, they implied no aptness in the object."

(The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson, Chapter 1)

Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathon Swift

noreply@blogger.com (Michele) — Fri, 20 Jan 2006 13:05:00 +0000

"And he gave it for his opinion, "that whoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together."

(Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathon Swift, Chapter 7)