An internal history, in quotations.

[cahn]

All right, one more list, and then back to the regularly scheduled ranting.

Here are ten Quotes That Are Important to Me. I was inspired to do this by a discussion with nolly-- I suspect that some of these are easier to get (than the last batch) if you are familiar with the work in question, or guessable if you know me, though I consider some of these much more obscure than the last batch. (D took it and got only 3 for sure and guessed another 2.) In chronological order of my first exposure to them:

1. "It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye... You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."

2. As I made my way home, I thought Jem and I would get grown but there wasn't much else for us to learn, except possibly algebra.

3. "And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet would I remember that once I saw the dragons aloft on the wind at sunset above the western isles; and I would be content."

4. In speaking of this desire for our own faroff country, which we find in ourselves even now, I feel a certain shyness. I am almost committing an indecency. I am trying to rip open the inconsolable secret in each one of you - the secret which hurts so much that you take your revenge on it by calling it names like Nostalgia and Romanticism and Adolescence; the secret also which pierces with such sweetness that when, in very intimate conversation, the mention of it becomes imminent, we grow awkward and affect to laugh at ourselves; the secret we cannot hide and cannot tell, though we desire to do both.

5. (for extra credit, what is the poem based on)
Thou indeed art just, Lord, if I contend
With thee; but, sir, so what I plead is just.
Why do sinners' ways prosper? and why must
Disappointment all I endeavor end?

6. ...Though Camelot is built, though the king sit on the throne,
yet the wood in the wild west of the shapes and names

probes everywhere through the frontier of head and hand;
everywhere the light through the great leaves is blown
on your substantial flesh, and everywhere your glory frames.

7. And straightway the father of the child cried out, and said with tears, Lord, I believe; help thou mine unbelief.

8. Tri lloneit prytwen yd aetham ni idi.
nam seith ny dyrreith o gaer sidi.

And because it's not fair otherwise, here's the proper translation:
Three fullnesses of Prydwen we went into it.
Except seven, none rose up from the Fortress of the Mound.

And to be perfectly fair, here's the "popular" translation (and the one I knew until my post-college-year):
Three shiploads of Prydwen we went to it;
except for seven, none returned from Caer Siddi.

9. "...libero, dritto e sano e' tuo arbitrio,
e fallo fora non fare a suo senno:

per ch'io te sovra te corono e mitrio."

("...Here your will is upright, free, and whole,
and you would be in error not to heed

whatever your own impulse prompts you to:
lord of yourself I crown and mitre you.")

10. "The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart."

Answers, with possibly way too much commentary, in a couple of days.

(edited to change dumb reference to wrong person, sorry...)

Comments

[sarahtales.livejournal.com]

Saint Exupery! Number One. I freaking love that quote. Uh, I think it may form the backbone of most of the stories I have ever written. It's one of those lines that pose a thousand questions. Why have you tamed this, how wild was it before, how well will the wild thing transition, what in God's name will your responsbilities be? And what fear and cost comes with being unique in all the world to another person.

Uh, the others I don't know.

[sarahtales.livejournal.com]

Oh, I finished Curse of Chalion and I liked it very, very much, though I thought the romance and Betriz really let down the rest of it. Recommend me another!

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

Yay! I'm so glad you liked it! I'm also appalled that I didn't warn you about Bujold's terrible whirlwind romances. (I like Betriz quite a bit as a character, but the romance has always squicked me out a bit.) It's a little annoying, because I feel like she writes everything else so well that I don't understand her inability to do romance properly.

ooh, more recs! Since you have not read To Kill a Mockingbird (#2) you need to do so Right Now. I'm just saying :) (It's all about responsibility in love-- mostly the familial and societal kind, mind you; the main character is something like six years old.) Also The Chosen (Potok) if you haven't read it.

More Bujold: I also very much like the sequel (Paladin of Souls). Just to warn, it also has a love story that I don't actually even remember the details of, so it's probably another random whirlwind thing, although at least there's no May-September squickiness. I don't much like the third Chalion book, The Hallowed Hunt. Stay far, far away from the "Sharing Knife" series (Beguilement, Legacy), where Bujold tries and fails to write genre-romance. If you liked Bujold enough, you might try Komarr, one of the later books of her Vorkosigan series but perhaps a good one to feel out whether you'd want to read the rest of them, since they're SF and I think you're not really a SF fan :)

[janewilliams20.livejournal.com]

Come to think of it, I should re-read TKaMB. I had to read it for O level English Lit, and that was a looooooong time ago. It probably says something that I still recognised the character instantly.

[charlie-ego.livejournal.com]

yes, you know, your comment (and Saint Exupery) crystallizes what I want with relationships (platonic/romantic/familial/whatever) in fiction... relationships are about responsibility. I mean, that's not why you get in them, usually! but that comes with the territory of being unique to another person, and if you ignore it entirely it's to your peril.

(This probably explains why I love your stories :) )