Question by Nick f: What passage from a book, has conjured up a very vivid image in your mind?
It can be factual, or fictional, even newspaper stories.
What have you read that has REALLY stuck in your mind, the words conjuring forth images with vivid clarity….what has MOVED you in print.
Please post your favourite passages here, with name of book, author etc, and a description of what you felt or saw in your mind, as you read.
I will start the ball rolling.
“We live together, we act on, and react to, one another; but always and in all circumstances we are by ourselves. The martyrs go hand in hand into the arena; they are crucified alone. Embraced, the lovers desperately try to fuse their insulated ecstasies into a single self-transcendence; in vain. By its very nature every embodied spirit is doomed to suffer and enjoy in solitude. Sensations, feelings, insights, fancies—all these are private and, except through symbols and at second hand, incommunicable. We can pool information about experiences, but never the experiences themselves. From family to nation, every human group is a society of island universes”
Aldous Huxley- Brave new world.
“Language is but intelligent sound, now music, music is intelligent language! It speaks to all. Our tongues were never divided. The one language, like before Babel has always been with us.”
“One Folk, One Realm, One Leader. Union with the unity of an insect swarm. Knowledgeless understanding of nonsense and diabolism. And then the newsreel camera had cut back to the serried ranks, the swastikas, the brass bands, the yelling hypnotist on the rostrum. And here once again, in the glare of his inner light, was the brown insectlike column, marching endlessly to the tunes of this rococo horror-music. Onward Nazi soldiers, onward Christian soldiers, onward Marxists and Muslims, onward every chosen People, every Crusader and Holy War-maker. Onward into misery, into all wickedness, into death!”
From Island, 1962. Aldous Huxley
Sandy, specifically, the question asks for passages in print, I can only assume that you haven’t read anything in print, as you appear to have been thwarted by a question less than 20 lines long!
Swiftcheetah, an example is what is required…at least you have read SOME kind of book recently.
Lisa, you can answer with text from books, as long as you cite the author, and give them proper credit for their work.
And you won’t bother…Oh my God….how will I live without your input?
Ty lala 🙂
Chinese symbology lady.
Lovecrafts the call of Cthulu, I found absolutely spellbinding, it was like a warm clammy hand wrapped around me that I squirmed at times to escape, yet it was hypnotically womblike most of the time…a true classic.
Wiesel’s Night, I agree was truly one of the most harrowing reads of my entire life, it left me drained, and even more cynical, than I was previously (Quite some feat I assure you) It was akin to being in a horrible accident which left me mentally scarred for months, and the lasting impressions are with me to this day!.
I also read Vachel Lindsays poem “The leaden eyed on the same day, and it was the day the 2nd big ethiopian famine hit our tv screens, truly, it was one of my darkest days!
Alissa T….Yes….I am really curious, sounds like my kind of thing.
Nice link redunico…. I have never read Dune, the film put me off attempting it, but I may give it a go someday…I read Asimov a lot for my Sci-fi fix.
Best answer:
Answer by Swiftcheetah T.T.M.W. Potter
Different things from the Harry Potter books.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
I WAS going to answer this with examples, but without the text, since I’m not certain I have the right to post other people’s work here for that purpose, but since you seem so set on the text thing, I’ll not bother.
What a classy guy!
NON FICTION:
Ok, since I don’t have the book right in front of me I’ll generalize the text from my memory, but it was in Elie Wiesel’s book ‘Night’ when he describes seeing babies being tossed into the air and shot at w/ machine guns like clay pidgeons…or children and babies being thrown alive into burning trenches. It is AWEFUL and i can’t imagine any humans having no soul like this. there are NO words for the tragedies associated with this time in history. My heart bleeds over it.
FICTION:
Aaah, too many to choose, esp if I include HS Thompson here, but even so, I have to go with the introductory passage in The Call of Cthulhu by HP Lovecraft: “The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity; and it was not meant that we should voyage far.” Wow, just amazing. What a writer. Genius. I get chills!
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Since lyrics are just poetry put to song, I also have to mention Tori Amos’ “Winter”…the entire song! So emotional…hits home for me, it’s about her father. OR S&G’s “Sound of Silence”…again, the entire song makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Beautifully moving lyrics.
*WARNING!! SPOILERS AHEAD!! DO NOT READ THIS ANSWER IF YOU HAVE NOT READ BREAKING DAWN OR INKDEATH YET!*
anyways, now i got that out of my system, i would have to say there are some very vivid images in my head from breaking dawn: when bella was giving birth to renesmee, and after that when she had the vampire venom running through her veins…
and from inkdeath by cornelia funke: when mo got jacopo to betray the adderhead for him and get the book he had bound death in during Inkspell, and managed to write heart, spell, death on the page without the adderhead noticing. another scene from inkdeath that sticks out in my mind was the scene right after, when the adderhead is taken away to the realm of death by the white women.
not to mention ms. funke’s description of his bloated, rotting body!!!!!! *shudders*
I recently read a book called: ‘Illuminati 2012’ and I LOVED it! The passage that was really intense is about 1.5 pages long so I’m not going to bother anyone with it, unless you are really curious.
Regardless, the passage had my heart racing with a range of emotions from Terrified to Awed to Enlightened. It really was a ‘one of a kind’ reflection on life and what it means to live.
The most vivid image from a book is the scene in Dune where the Bene Gesserit were testing Paul for humanness.