"It was an awkward dance, with death calling the tune, and in a way, I felt sorry for Halderson who was simply trying to be kind."
-- William Kent Krueger in Ordinary Grace.

"The flush on her cheeks and the brightness in her eyes, somewhat feverish in origin though he guessed it to be, gave her a vital quality that accentuated the appeal of her youth. Mordecai Tremaine's sentimental soul described a somersault."

- Francis Duncan in Murder for Christmas

Yoyobon, I liked that sentence very much, too.

"Hold to the now, the here, through which all future plunges to the past."

Ulysses by James Joyce

"Perhaps I could have saved him, with only a word, two words, out of my mouth. Perhaps I could have saved us all. But I never spoke them."

(Alan Paton: Too Late the Phalarope).

"He appeared at our house on a Sunday in November 189---. I still say "our" house, though it is ours no longer; nearly fifteen years have passed since we left the neighborhood, and we shall not be going back to it."

(Alain-Fournier: The Lost Domain (le Grand Meaulnes).)

"The driver put the cab in gear and Broadway began slipping by the windows like a string of lights being pulled off a Christmas Tree."
- Amor Towles in Rules of Civility

" One of the pleasantest of all emotions is to know that I , I with my brain and my hands, have nourished my beloved few, that I have concocted a stew or a story, a rarity or a plain dish, to sustain them truly against the hungers of the world."

- M.F.K. Fisher

“Writing was like prying a cactus sticker from beneath my skin. Sometimes the process was painful, but it felt better once it came out, and only then could the healing start.”

-Dave Boling in his novel The Lost History of Stars

I just read this in News of the World by Paulette Jiles. It's not what you'd call eloquent, but it sure rang true. Following a couple days of hot pursuit and a gunfight during which the character (Captain Kidd) barely managed to stay alive and protect his young charge, this:

"Captain Kidd looked up and enviously considered the chickens -- so daft, so stupid, so uninformed."

LOL........I may or may not entertain that thought on a daily basis !

"For he loved the Trachis winters, when all the summer cottages were closed and the island tucked into itself, a closed shell, a clam: the snow squalls in the afternoons, fires in the hearth, and the short, pink twilights with the sun racing into the sea."
-- Brad Kessler in Birds in Fall

By the writer and 'cultural historian' David Lowenthal, US academic, in response to each generation's attempt to re-write history by selective suppression (eg statues of controversial figures being removed)

"History can be hard to digest. But it must be swallowed whole to undeceive the present and edify the future."

From his book The Past is a Different Country.

This is from a letter to her readers written by Louise Penny :

"Ring the bells that stil can ring

Forget your perfect offering

There is a crack in everything.

That's how the light gets in. "

Yoyo, were you aware that these words are taken from a poem by the late Leonard Cohen? (they are not original to Penny). Last year I attended a marvelous workshop on the music, poetry, and life of Cohen here in Charleston, SC, as part of the annual Spoletto Festival.

I understood that they were not her own words by the way she had inserted them in italics into her letter. I have meant to google them to find the source .

Those words struck me very deeply and reminded me of so many of life's painful challenges and consequent meanings.

His entire poem is quite thought-provoking and beautiful.

" 'All is bright.' Crie's exquisite voice played in the rafters with the lights then slipped under the door of the old chapel and danced with the gently falling snowflakes and parked cars and bare maples. The words of the old carol glided across the frozen pond and nested in the Christmas trees and seeped into every happy home in Three Pines. "

-from A Fatal Grace by Louise Penny

Beautiful. No wonder so many of us want to go live in Three Pines.

Just found a comment for readers: Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are. Mason Cooley.

Two quotes from the last book I read, The Trouble with Goats and Sheep by Joanna Cannon:

"We sat in silence. I knew straightaway that Walter Bishop was the kind of person you could sit in silence with. There were very few people like that, I had found. Most grown-ups liked to fill a silence with conversation. Not important, necessary conversation, but a spray of words that served no purpose other than to cover up the quiet."

"It's the small decisions, the ones that slip themselves into your day unnoticed, the ones that wrap their weight in insignificance. These are the decisions that will bury you".

The first quote reminds me of a Maisie Dobbs philosophy which she practices .

This evocative sentence interrupted my reading flow, making me read it multiple times:

"The most delicious meal of her life, she said, had been chargrilled octopus, which she'd eaten at sunset in an unassuming harbor front taverna one late summer evening on Naxos."

from Eleanor Oliphant is completely fine by Gail Honeyman

" As we walked to the dining room that evening, I could almost hear the heavy fabric of Angela's lifelong disappointment swishing. This was to be a silent meal. I dreaded it already. "

from The Shape Of Mercy by Susan Meissner

President Warren Harding was an orator, but his bloviations were an army of pompous phrases moving across the landscape in search of an idea.— Harold Evans, New York Times Book Review,

Two quotes from Virgil Wander by Leif Enger:

"Insomniacs have a leg up in the reading game …"

"Reliable is exactly what he was. Yet it was also true he had a headful of spiders which woke now and then and altered his personal scenery."

"...and a weather-tanned face that had got so used to being handsome all its life that it was handsome still, and always would be."

From Country Plot by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

"If you stuck a pin in him, he would bleed pin stripe."

From Guilty Not Guilty by Felix Francis

" Who hurt you once,

so far beyond repair,

that you would greet each overture

with curling lip."

- from a Louise Penny novel

Oh this simply is hilarious......without ( perhaps) meaning to be.

In A Perilous Undertaking, the author writes :

"He stroked his own jaw looking quite satisfied, as well he might. I had seldom seen a more firmly set bone on any man. "

Rivaled only by the observation in A Curious Beginning when Veronica notes that the lady of the manor "held many balls in that very hall". Honestly, I almost can see the author tongue-in-cheek as she typed that one !

Bon, you're having entirely too much fun.

"She looked like a woman in her fifties who had not enjoyed the journey." Ghost Ups Her Game, Carolyn Hart

Good one, Carolyn. I'd say we all know exactly what that author means.

. . . the faculty librarian was a fussy little man with fussy little hands and feet and a fussy little pot belly--like a cantaloupe . . . he delivered his words with irritating precision, pursing and stretching his lips lest a single phoneme emerge incompletely rounded. Fellowship of Fear, Aaron Elkins

This made me laugh out loud ( 'rogering' ? ) :

" He has an earthy sort of character. He's robust and always slightly flushed, as if he had just come from rogering the milkmaid in the haymow. "

Silent On The Moor - Deanna Raybourn

" We are so chuffed to be sent here" , the dimply girl gushed, curly lashes working up a breeze of enthusiasm.

The Rose Code - Kate Quinn

" She paused, her expression suddenly abashed. ' You will have heard that I married Sir Cedric, and that he was lost during our voyage out.' Leave it to Lucy to describe the death of her husband in such a fashion as to make him sound like a left parcel. "

Dark Road To Darjeeling - Deanna Raybourn

Lol....Carolyn : "She looked like a woman in her fifties who had not enjoyed the journey."

We'd say she looked rode hard and put away wet ! ( equine-ly speaking !! )

From Once Upon A Wardrobe, spoken by C.S. Lewis ( as written by Patti Callahan):

"Every life should be guided by and enriched by one book or another, don't you agree? Certainly, every formative moment in my life has been enriched or informed by a book. You must be very careful about what you choose to read----unless you want to stay stuck in your opinions and hard-boiled thoughts, you must be very careful."

" Most of the time you can hide all this mess under your gloves, but when you're smoking or drinking coffee in a joint like this, the gloves come off. You sit naked before your companion. Your age is written on your hands , plain to read, and there's nothing you can do about that, is there ? "

- A Certain Age by Beatriz Williams

"Instead, here he was. Being nice. Like some bloody Canadian."

Death in Cornwall by G. M. Malliet

Is there an affectionate rivalry between the US and Canada, like with Australia and New Zealand?

The Kiwis accuse the Aussies of claiming notable people and things!

I would say we are friendly neighbors ( minus the awful smoke from their wild fires ).

That is very admirable considering our entire northern border is shared with Canada.