Gormenghast by Mervyn Peake, r. Nov. 2024

 p. 12 His mind, and the minds of his small companions in that leather-walled schoolroom, was far away, but in a world, not of prophets, but of swopped marbles, birds' eggs, wooden daggers, secrets and catapults, midnight feasts, heroes, deadly rivalries and desperate friendships.

p. 76 And then he felt something more thrilling than the warm kiss of the sun on the back of his neck: it was a reedy flight of cold April air across his face – something perilous and horribly exciting – something very shrill, that whistled through his qualmy stomach and down his thighs.

p. 93 It had been a difficult time for [Bellgrove] since he first put on the Zodiac gown of high office. Was he winning or losing his fight for authority? He longed for respect, but he loved indolence also. Time would tell whether the nobility of his august head could become the symbol of his leadership. To tread the corridors of Gormenghast the acknowledged master of staff and pupil alike! He must be wise, stern, yet generous. He must be revered. That was it... revered. But did this mean that he would be involved in extra work...? Surely, at his age...?

p. 96 Bellgrove came to with a start. He looked about him with the melancholy grandeur of a sick lion. Then he found his mouth was open, so he closed it gradually, for he would not have them think that he would hurry himself for anyone.

p. 133 Noon, ripe as thunder and silent as thought, had fled unfingered.

p. 135 'I have no idea,' he said. 'No idea whatsoever, as to what it can be to which you are referring.' His words could not have sounded heavier or less honest. He must have felt this himself, for he added, 'Not an inkling, I assure you.'

p. 148 With the nightmare memory of his recent adventure filling his mind he moved in a trance, waking from time to time to wonder at this new manifestation of life's incalculable strangeness – the little box ahead of him, the sunshine playing over the head of Gormenghast Mountain, where it rose, with unbelievable solidity, ahead, like a challenge, on the skyline.

p. 264 And Titus watching longed with his whole being to be anonymous – to be lost within the core of such a breed – to be able to live and run and fight and laugh and if need be, cry, on his own. For to be one of those wild children would have been to be alone among companions. As the Earl of Gormenghast he could never be alone. He could only be lonely.

p. 269 And every day the myriad happenings. A loosened stone falls from a high tower. A fly drops lifeless from a broken pane. A sparrow twitters in a cave of ivy. The days wear out the months and the months wear out the years, and a flux of moments, like an unquiet tide, eats at the black coast of futurity. And Titus Groan is wading through his boyhood.

p. 405 [Countess Gertrude's] brain began to go to sleep again. She had lost interest in it and the things that it could do. It had been brought forth like a machine from the darkness and set in motion – and it had proved itself to be measured and powerful, like the progress of an army on the march. But it now chose to halt. It chose to sleep again.

p. 407 It was when he saw the great walls looming above him that he began to run. He ran as though to obey an order. And this was so, though he knew nothing of it. He ran in the acknowledgement of a law as old as the laws of his home. The law of flesh and blood. The law of longing. The law of change. The law of youth. The law that separates the generations, that draws the child from his mother, the boy from his father, the youth from both. And it was the law of quest. The law that few obey for lack of valour. The craving of the young for the unknown and all that lies beyond the tenuous skyline.

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles, r. Nov. 2024

Page 35

I guess some people are like that when it comes to surprises. Me, I love surprises. I love it when life pulls

a rabbit out of a hat. Like when the blue-plate special is turkey and stuffing in the middle of May. But

some people just don’t like being caught off guard—even by good news.

Page 38

Country cooking . . . You hear a lot about it back East. It’s one of those things that people revere even

when they’ve never had any firsthand experience with it. Like justice and Jesus.

Page 103

I do it because it’s old-fashioned. Just because something’s new doesn’t mean it’s better; and often

enough, it means it’s worse. Saying please and thank you is plenty old-fashioned. Getting married and

raising children is old-fashioned. Traditions, the very means by which we come to know who we are, are

nothing if not old-fashioned.

Page 175

it had been in gratitude that by gently coaxing her from her malaise in order to witness this magical

display, he had reminded her of what joy could be, if only she were willing to leave her daily life behind.

Page 201

Emmett was raised to hold no man in disdain. To hold another man in disdain, his father would say,

presumed that you knew so much about his lot, so much about his intentions, about his actions both

public and private that you could rank his character against your own without fear of misjudgment. But

as he watched the one called Parker empty another glass of tepid gin and then draw the olive off the

minute hand with his teeth, Emmett couldn’t help but measure the man and find him wanting.

Page 222

The boy continued to shake his head, though not in a contrary way. He shook his head in the manner of

patience and kinship.

Page 288

On the bed were four cardboard boxes with his name written on them. Woolly paused for a moment to

marvel at the handwriting. For even though his name had been written in letters two inches tall with a

big black marker, you could still tell it was his sister’s handwriting—the very same handwriting that

had been used to write the tiny little numbers on the tiny little rectangle in the telephone dial. Isn’t that

interesting, thought Woolly, that a person’s handwriting is the same no matter how big or small.

Page 406

Well, when circumstances conspire to spoil your carefully laid plans with an unexpected reversal, the

best thing you can do is take credit as quickly as possible.

Page 422

And from all of these pages upon pages, one thing I have learned is that there is just enough variety in

human experience for every single person in a city the size of New York to feel with assurance that their

experience is unique. And this is a wonderful thing. Because to aspire, to fall in love, to stumble as we do

and yet soldier on, at some level we must believe that what we are going through has never been

experienced quite as we have experienced it.

Page 455

—No, no, said Woolly. It’s for you. I took it out of the box because I want you to have it. Shaking his

head, Billy said that such a watch was far too precious to be given away. —But that’s not so, countered

Woolly excitedly. It’s not a watch that’s too precious to be given away. It’s a watch that’s too precious for

keeping. It was handed down from my grandfather to my uncle, who handed it down to me. Now I am

handing it down to you. And one day—many years from now—you can hand it down to someone else.

Perhaps Woolly hadn’t put his point to perfection, but Billy seemed to understand.

Page 463

But maybe, I was thinking as I was driving over the Hudson River, just maybe the will to stay put stems

not from a man’s virtues but from his vices. After all, aren’t gluttony, sloth, and greed all about staying

put? Don’t they amount to sitting deep in a chair where you can eat more, idle more, and want more? In

a way, pride and envy are about staying put too. For just as pride is founded on what you’ve built up

around you, envy is founded on what your neighbor has built across the street. A man’s home may be

his castle, but the moat, it seems to me, is just as good at keeping people in as it is at keeping people out.

Page 477

Emmett could tell that Sally was as ashamed as he was, and there was comfort in that too. Not the

comfort of knowing that someone else was feeling a similar sting of rebuke. Rather, the comfort of

knowing one’s sense of right and wrong was shared by another, and thus was somehow more true.

Page 505

What an extraordinary passage were those first years in Manhattan! When Abacus experienced

firsthand the omnivalent, omnipresent, omnifarious widening that is life. Or rather, that is the first half

of life. When did the change come? When did the outer limits of his world turn their corner and begin

moving inexorably toward their terminal convergence?

Page 506

How easily we forget—we in the business of storytelling—that life was the point all along.

Page 536

Emmett shook his head, uncertain of whether his father’s actions should give him cause for

disappointment or admiration. As usual with such puzzles of the heart, the answer was probably both.

Page 547

He was clearly rattled by it. In all probability, he had never seen a dead body before, certainly not the

body of a friend. So I really couldn’t fault him for throwing some blame my way. That’s what rattled

people do. They point a finger. They point a finger at whoever’s standing closest—and given the nature

of how we congregate, that’s more likely to be friend than foe.