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Post by Christmas Chief on Nov 24, 2012 17:00:12 GMT -5
WCTBATH is rich in description, imagery, analogy, and wordplay. What quotations - or even longer excerpts - from the novel did you find most well-expressed?
Here are a few I find frequently cited:
"Green eyes she had, and hair so black it made the night look pale." "Don't repeat yourself. It's not only repetitive, it's redundant, and people here have heard it before." "Knowing that something is wrong and doing it anyway happens very often in life, and I doubt if I will ever know why." "The map is not the territory." "They say in every library there is a book that can answer the question that burns like a fire in the mind."
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Post by Kit's tits kick ticks on Nov 24, 2012 17:04:48 GMT -5
Oh, there are so many of them. I started to write them down and it was three hand written pages in a little book (my handwriting is very small too, so it's like the same number of normal pages with normal handwriting) for the first three chapters.
The "Dont repeat yourself..." one is one of the best, and "To me a promise isn't an insect in my face. It's a promise".
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Post by Dante on Nov 24, 2012 17:05:41 GMT -5
The question that burns like a fire in the mind... now if only I could know how Handler came up with that beauty. For me it's the standout line of the whole book.
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Post by B. on Nov 24, 2012 17:07:49 GMT -5
The description of Moxie's eyes stand out for me most- I know there are many more, but it's the one that I remember most right now.
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Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on Nov 24, 2012 17:14:58 GMT -5
"I stopped looking at her typewriter and looked at her eyes. Their color was pretty interesting, too, a dark gray, like they’d once been black but somebody had washed them or perhaps had made her cry for a long time." Yes, that part may be my favourite as well.
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Post by Christmas Chief on Nov 24, 2012 17:27:25 GMT -5
The question that burns like a fire in the mind... now if only I could know how Handler came up with that beauty. For me it's the standout line of the whole book. I had assumed it was an allusion and made a note to look it up later. (Qwerty says "They say," for one, but it also reminded me of TPP, in which Kit quotes Thackeray without referencing the name.) But to discover no such allusion exists renewed my admiration for the piece all over again.
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Antenora
Detriment Deleter
Fiendish Philologist
Put down that harpoon gun, in the name of these wonderful birds!
Posts: 15,891
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Post by Antenora on Nov 24, 2012 18:17:34 GMT -5
I also loved the burning question line. A few more of my favorites:
"[The suit] had hung in my closet for weeks, like an empty person."
"Stretched out in front of me was my time as an adult, and then a skeleton, and then nothing except perhaps a few books on a few shelves."
And the closing lines: "I had been wrong over and over and over again, wrong every time about every clue to the dark and inky mystery hanging over me and everybody else. It rang like a bell in my head-- wrong, wrong, wrong. I was wrong, I thought, but maybe if I stayed in this town long enough, I could make everything right."
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Post by Poe's Coats Host Toast on Nov 24, 2012 22:11:39 GMT -5
"[The suit] had hung in my closet for weeks, like an empty person." Yes! I forgot about that one til now. I really loved that, and I could just picture Daniel Handler looking into his closet and coming up with that line.
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Post by Tryina Denouement on Nov 25, 2012 3:31:51 GMT -5
"I had been wrong over and over and over again, wrong every time about every clue to the dark and inky mystery hanging over me and everybody else. It rang like a bell in my head-- wrong, wrong, wrong. I was wrong, I thought, but maybe if I stayed in this town long enough, I could make everything right." That is also my fav! My fav is: 'A secret note is secret. There is no reason to sign it.' And: ''You're an apprentice, Snicket, not a mynah bird." Reason For Editing: Adding things.
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Post by Bat Wayne on Nov 25, 2012 8:54:46 GMT -5
I don't own it, so I can't look it up, but I particularly liked the line about when a person is screaming and you sit down and draw nine squares...something along those lines.
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Post by Christmas Chief on Nov 25, 2012 9:01:41 GMT -5
The passage is the opening of Chapter Nine: "There’s an easy method for finding someone when you hear them scream. First get a clean sheet of paper and a sharp pencil. Then sketch out nine rows of fourteen squares each. Then throw the piece of paper away and find whoever is screaming so you can help them. It is no time to fiddle with paper."
I'm not sure which is funnier: The passage, or the fact that Prosper Lost actually does so.
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Post by Bat Wayne on Nov 25, 2012 9:18:37 GMT -5
The passage is the opening of Chapter Nine: "There’s an easy method for finding someone when you hear them scream. First get a clean sheet of paper and a sharp pencil. Then sketch out nine rows of fourteen squares each. Then throw the piece of paper away and find whoever is screaming so you can help them. It is no time to fiddle with paper." I'm not sure which is funnier: The passage, or the fact that Prosper Lost actually does so. Thank you for that, and yes I agree. I laughed longer than I shold have at this.
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Post by Hermes on Nov 25, 2012 13:18:14 GMT -5
The question that burns like a fire in the mind... now if only I could know how Handler came up with that beauty. For me it's the standout line of the whole book. I think one partial inspiration for it may be Yeats' Song of Wandering Aengus: 'I went into the hazel wood Because a fire was in my head'.
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Q.R.V.
Formidable Foreman
Better paranoid than dead.
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Post by Q.R.V. on Nov 25, 2012 17:38:45 GMT -5
"I was tempted to take off my wet socks, and not only because they were uncomfortable."
The entire build-up of the gesturing conversation as Snicket and Theodora decide who is to carry the beast.
"You've probably never been to the Far East Suite at the Lost Arms in Stain'd-by-the-Sea, but I'm sure you've been in a room you couldn't wait to leave, which is about the same thing."
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Post by Christmas Chief on Nov 25, 2012 17:50:49 GMT -5
"I was tempted to take off my wet socks, and not only because they were uncomfortable." This reminds me of another of my favorites: "If someone wanted to torture me until I told themacritical piece of information, all they would have to do is get my socks wet."
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