More on greatest excerpts, I was going for like a specific scene where you felt the writing was some of the best and/or conveyed a strong message/emotions, of course kept somewhat nonspoilery within reason. I’d love to hear what you guys think!
Personal top five:
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Final chapter of 1984. Don’t want to give to much away for those that haven’t read, but boy this chapter is brutal. It is a veryyyy unique chapter that I haven’t come across again in literature and it is so well done. Bravo to Orwell.
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!Apache attack!< in Blood Meridian.
!Something about McCarthy’s prose is just insanely vivid and here we get this utterly terrifying depiction of a band of tribesmen stampeding towards our characters. This is probably what I would call the “best written” excerpt.!<
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!Aftermath of the second (first on page) death!< in Lord of the Flies. Golding’s use of imagery here is just so beautiful and I’m a sucker for religious symbolism so this hit hard. It’s so terrifyingly peaceful and fits the character >!better than any other send off I’ve read. The final death is also expertly written.!<
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!Eve reveals that she ate from the tree of knowledge!< in Paradise Lost.
!Milton summarizes humanity’s loss of pure love with the greying of a rose that falls from a wreath Adam is making for his love, Eve. Need I say more?!<
- Bridge to Terabithia… you know the moment. Of course this doesn’t hold up to the writing of the others but I’ve never been gut punched so hard by a book.
The scene in Anna Karenina (this is the Maude translation) where Levin sees Kitty ice skating is one of my favorites, especially the last line of this passage.
“‘Can I really step down on to the ice, and go up to her?’ he thought. The spot where she stood seemed to him an unapproachable sanctuary, and there was a moment when he nearly went away, he was so filled with awe. He had to make an effort and reason with himself that all sorts of people were passing near her and he himself might have come just to skate. He stepped down, avoiding any long look at her as one avoids long looks at the sun, but seeing her as one sees the sun, without looking.”
The War’s Evensong section of Gravity’s Rainbow. 120-136 in the Viking edition I think.
Some that come to mind for me:
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The last paragraph in One Hundred Years of Solitude
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The first paragraph in The Haunting of Hill House
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The monster‘s tale in Frankenstein
God I was trying to work out which bit of Frankenstein to put but decided it’s all 10/10 and therefore not an extract 😂
One Hundred Years of Solitude wraps up the story like a fever dream and it’s exactly how it needed to be.
You know that „he held let out a breath he didn‘t know he was holding“ thing authors always use? When I was done with the last paragraph of that book, I did exactly that.
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Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta. She was Lo, plain Lo, in the morning, standing four feet ten in one sock. She was Lola in slacks. She was Dolly at school. She was Dolores on the dotted line. But in my arms she was always Lolita.
the suicide passage in Infinite Jest:
“The so-called ‘psychotically depressed’ person who tries to kill herself doesn’t do so out of quote ‘hopelessness’ or any abstract conviction that life’s assets and debits do not square. And surely not because death seems suddenly appealing. The person in whom Its invisible agony reaches a certain unendurable level will kill herself the same way a trapped person will eventually jump from the window of a burning high-rise. Make no mistake about people who leap from burning windows. Their terror of falling from a great height is still just as great as it would be for you or me standing speculatively at the same window just checking out the view; i.e. the fear of falling remains a constant. The variable here is the other terror, the fire’s flames: when the flames get close enough, falling to death becomes the slightly less terrible of two terrors. It’s not desiring the fall; it’s terror of the flames. And yet nobody down on the sidewalk, looking up and yelling ‘Don’t!’ and ‘Hang on!’, can understand the jump. Not really. You’d have to have personally been trapped and felt flames to really understand a terror way beyond falling.”
Damn, what a passage. Makes me wanna read this one asap!
When my brother killed himself 363 days ago, my ex introduced me to this passage, it was really helpful in trying to comprehend how what had happened could have happened. Amazing imagery, if nothing else.
The section in Authority by Jeff Vandermeer where Control discovers >!Whitby, hidden in the storage room.!<
It’s such a visceral moment. The distilled essence of that moment when you realize you aren’t alone when you absolutely should be.
The final paragraph of James Joyce’s The Dead is for my money the most beautiful piece of writing in the language. Just amazing.
The description of what actually happened with Snowden in Catch-22 makes me feel… some kinda way. We’ve been circling this one event for the whole book, getting vague glimpses, and finally having that reveal (even through we knew what happened all along, just not how) feels like regaining access to a traumatic memory. I mean.
! “I’m cold,” Snowden said softly. “I’m cold.”
“You’re going to be all right, kid,” Yossarian reassured him with a grin. “You’re going to be all right.”
“I’m cold,” Snowden said again in a frail, childlike voice. “I’m cold.”
“There, there,” Yossarian said, because he did not know what else to say. “There, there.”
“I’m cold,” Snowden whimpered. “I’m cold.”
“There, there. There, there.” !<
Oh, and also! The closing passage of Roadside Picnic always felt so incredibly frantic and emotional. It reads better in Russian to me, but the translation still works. I’m an animal, you can see that I’m an animal… so good.
!And he was no longer trying to think. He just kept repeating to himself in despair, like a prayer, “I’m an animal, you can see that I’m an animal. I have no words, they haven’t taught me the words; I don’t know how to think, those bastards didn’t let me learn how to think. But if you really are-all powerful, all knowing, all understanding—figure it out! Look into my soul, I know everything you need is in there. It has to be. Because I’ve never sold my soul to anyone! It’s mine, it’s human! Figure out yourself what I want—because I know it can’t be bad! The hell with it all, I just can’t think of a thing other than those words of his—HAPPINESS, FREE, FOR EVERYONE, AND LET NO ONE BE FORGOTTEN!"!<
Your post is talking about good books and has a subject that might actually spawn some interesting conversation…so you’re not gonna get many responses. Not on this sub. Post this to r/literature
The battle royal in Ellison’s Invisible Man.
You might like r/proseporn
The pool scene from Gideon the Ninth. Especially Harrow’s quote.
I have tried to dismantle you, Gideon Nav! The Ninth House poisoned you, we trod you underfoot—I took you to this killing field as my slave—you refuse to die, and you pity me! Strike me down. You’ve won. I’ve lived my whole wretched life at your mercy, yours alone, and God knows I deserve to die at your hand. You are my only friend. I am undone without you.
It hits so hard, and then somehow even harder on the re-read. This whole book has so many tonal shifts in the prose and dialogue that swing so well between makes-you-snort comedy to that weird stilling in your heart.
Pilar’s story in the tenth chapter of For Whom the Bell Tolls.