# A quote from the book you're currently reading



## Nightchill (Oct 19, 2013)

The title speaks for itself.

_If we’re nothing more than our thoughts and passions and if our thoughts and passions are nothing more than movements of our souls, then we are nothing more than those who move us. 
_
- R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness that Comes Before


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## A Skylark (Jan 16, 2013)

Nightchill said:


> The title speaks for itself.
> 
> _If we’re nothing more than our thoughts and passions and if our thoughts and passions are nothing more than movements of our souls, then we are nothing more than those who move us.
> _
> - R. Scott Bakker, The Darkness that Comes Before


I like that one.

At the moment, I'm re-reading my very favorite book ever, Moby Dick. See signature. Or, one of my other favourites:

"Oh, life! 'tis in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge, -as wild, untutored things are forced to feed- Oh, life! 'tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee! but 'tis not me! that horror's out of me! and with the soft feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim, phantom futures! Stand by me, hold, bind me, O ye blessed influences!"


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## Damagedfinger (Oct 27, 2013)

The Hounds Of The Baskervilles:

"The world is full of obvious things which nobody by any chance ever observes"
- Sherlock Holmes.


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## Volant (Oct 5, 2013)

"I think he's doing sarcasm, when he says the really opposite with a voice that's all twisty." - _Room,_ Emma Donoghue


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## Thalassa (Jun 10, 2010)

"To you who enter this room as a guest, we who manage this hotel give hearty greeting. We may never get to know you, but just the same we want you to feel that this is a human house, and not a soulless institution. This is your home, be it for a day or night only. Human beings own the place. Human beings care for you here, make the bed and clean the room, answer your telephone, run your errands. We keep a human being at the desk and a human being carries your valise. They are all made of flesh and blood, as you are; they have their interests, likes and dislikes, ambitions, dreams and disappointments, just as you have."

- The Air Conditioned Nightmare by Henry Miller


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## The Scorched Earth (May 17, 2010)

A Skylark said:


> I like that one.
> 
> At the moment, I'm re-reading my very favorite book ever, Moby Dick. See signature. Or, one of my other favourites:
> 
> "Oh, life! 'tis in an hour like this, with soul beat down and held to knowledge, -as wild, untutored things are forced to feed- Oh, life! 'tis now that I do feel the latent horror in thee! but 'tis not me! that horror's out of me! and with the soft feeling of the human in me, yet will I try to fight ye, ye grim, phantom futures! Stand by me, hold, bind me, O ye blessed influences!"


Hmm. I'm reading Moby-Dick now and I don't recall that passage. What chapter is that? (No spoilers, please)


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## android654 (Jan 19, 2010)

"That was about it, I'd had it. Put down my glass, time to fold her tent. But she stood, came to me, said, 'Fuck me rough.'

Before I could reply, she put her hand on my crotch, pulled the zip down, took a grip of the action. She purred, 'Oh, you're ready to pop.'

I was... and in a little while I did. She was sitting astride me and gave a slow smile, said, 'I've a piece of you now, you'll never ball any other broad... you hear me?'

'What's this... post-coital aggression?'

'It's the truth, remember you've been warned."

Her Last Call To Louis Macneice by Ken Bruen


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## Children Of The Bad Revolution (Oct 8, 2013)

“He smiled understandingly-much more than understandingly. It was one of those rare smiles with a quality of eternal reassurance in it, that you may come across four or five times in life. It faced--or seemed to face--the whole eternal world for an instant, and then concentrated on you with an irresistible prejudice in your favor. It understood you just as far as you wanted to be understood, believed in you as you would like to believe in yourself, and assured you that it had precisely the impression of you that, at your best, you hoped to convey.” - F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby


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## FearAndTrembling (Jun 5, 2013)

Last fiction book I read was Valis by Philip Dick. This guy is absolutely crazy, but he makes me think. 



> We are not individuals. We are stations in a single Mind. We are supposed to remain separate from one another at all times.






> The external information or gnosis, then, consists of disinhibiting instructions, with the core content actually intrinsic to us—that is, already there (first observed by Plato; viz: that learning is a form of remembering).





His explanation of how the universe was created and Jesus Christ, from Valis:



> The One was and was-not, combined, and desired to separate the was-not from the was. So it generated a diploid sac which contained, like an eggshell, a pair of twins, each an androgyny, spinning in opposite directions (the Yin and Yang of Taoism, with the One as the Tao). The plan of the One was that both twins would emerge into being (was-ness) simultaneously; however, motivated by a desire to be (which the One implanted in both twins), the counter-clockwise twin broke through the sac and separated prematurely; i.e. before full term. This was the dark or Yin twin. Therefore it was defective. At full term the wiser twin emerged. Each twin formed a unitary entelechy, a single living organism made of psyche and soma, still rotating in opposite directions to each other. The full term twin, called Form I by Parmenides, advanced correctly through its growth stages, but the prematurely born twin, called Form II, languished.The next step in the One's plan was that the Two would become the Many, through their dialetic interaction. From them as hyperuniverses they projected a hologram-like interface, which is the pluriform universe we creatures inhabit. The two sources were to intermingle equally in maintaining our universe, but Form II continued to languish toward illness, madness and disorder. These aspects she projected into our universe.
> It was the One's purpose for our hologramatic universe to serve as a teaching instrument by which a variety of new lives advanced until ultimately they would be isomorphic with the One. However, the decaying condition of hyperuniverse II introduced malfactors which damaged our hologramatic universe. This is the origin of entropy, undeserved suffering, chaos and death, as well as the Empire, the Black Iron Prison; in essence, the aborting of the proper health and growth of the life forms within the hologramatic universe. Also, the teaching function was grossly impaired, since only the signal from the hyperuniverse I was information-rich; that from II had become noise.
> The psyche of hyperuniverse I sent a micro-form of itself into hyperuniverse II to attempt to heal it. The micro-form was apparent in our hologramatic universe as Jesus Christ. However, hyperuniverse II, being deranged, at once tormented, humiliated, rejected and finally killed the micro-form of the healing psyche of her healthy twin. After that, hyperuniverse II continued to decay into blind, mechanical, purposeless causal processes. It then became the task of Christ (more properly the Holy Spirit) to either rescue the life forms in the hologramatic universe, or abolish all influences on it emanating from II. Approaching its task with caution, it prepared to kill the deranged twin, since she cannot be healed; i.e. she will not allow herself to be healed because she does not not understand that she is sick. This illness and madness pervades us and makes us idiots living in private, unreal worlds. The original plan of the One can only be realized now by the division of hyperuniverse I into two healthy hyperuniverses, which will transform the hologramatic universe into the successfull teaching machine it was designed to be. We will experience this as the "Kingdom of God."
> Within time, hyperuniverse II remains alive: "The Empire never ended." But in eternity, where the hyperuniverses exist, she has been killed—of necessity—by the healthy twin of hyperuniverse I, who is our champion. The One grieves for this death, since the One loved both twins; therefore the information of the Mind consists of a tragic tale of the death of a woman, the undertones of which generate anguish into all the creatures of the hologrammatic universe without their knowing why. This grief will depart when the healthy twin undergoes mitosis and the "Kingdom of God" arrives. The machinery for this transformation—the procession within time from the Age of Iron to the Age of Gold—is at work now; in eternity it is already accomplished.


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## A Skylark (Jan 16, 2013)

The Scorched Earth said:


> Hmm. I'm reading Moby-Dick now and I don't recall that passage. What chapter is that? (No spoilers, please)


Chapter 38. Ahab's speech-thingy and the ship's reaction are some of my favourite parts in the whole book, though my very favourite would have to be Chapter 132, The Symphony. Moby Dick is good at having these small, but beautiful chunks of storytelling sandwiched between huge chunks of whale nonsense. Keep going, though- in the end, soooo worth it!


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## Epherion (Aug 23, 2011)

@FearAndTrembling PKD had great ideas but his execution needs work. Do read A Scanner Darkly. VALIS was an intriguing book, its based off his experience with LSD and anesthesia. 



Julius Evola; Men Among the Ruins. said:


> In summary, let it be said that breaking through into more thoughtful minds is the idea that in the current state of affairs, the uniting of Europe into a single bloc is the indispensable prerequisite for its continuation in a form other than an empty geographical concept on the same materialistic level as that of the powers that seek to control the world. For all the reasons already explained, we know that this crisis involves a dual inner problem, if under these circumstances one hopes to establish a firm foundation, a deeper sense, and an organic character for a possible united Europe. On the one hand, an initiative in the sense of a spiritual and psychic detoxification must be taken against what is commonly known as "modern culture." On the other, there is the question of the kind of "metaphysics" that is capable, today, of supporting both a national and a supernational principle of true authority and legitimacy. The dual problem can be translated into a dual imperative. It remains to be seen which and how many men, in spite of it all, still stand upright among so many ruins, in order that they may make this task their own.


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## FearAndTrembling (Jun 5, 2013)

I have read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, The Man in the High Castle, and Valis. I think that Dick is a guy who is more an intellectual than a story teller. You can tell you are dealing with a very wise and deep man, but the stories just aren't great. They are like a background for his philosophy. Which is worth reading by itself, but the stories could be better.


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## Off The Hitch (Nov 9, 2012)

_"If God almighty thus treats those whom he loves, I earnestly beseech him never think of me." _

Baron D'Holbach, _Good Sense_.

Had a good chuckle.


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## Praelatus (Jul 4, 2013)

I was going to post the exact Prince of Nothing quote that's in the OP, shockingly. So instead I'll leave everyone with possibly two of the most disgusting paragraphs of text I've ever read. I can't begin to fathom why anyone reads Fifty Shades, or even how an author could manage to go through with something like this. It's like publishing some ridiculous fantasy you have while masturbating... well, that's _exactly what it is._



> I shudder and mewl in ecstasy. When I try to right myself to sit up again; he bites down before letting me go. This delight sends my back arching and pelvis thrusting forward, playing straight into his waiting tongue’s hand.
> Avaricious velvet licks at me with long wet strokes and I lose all reason, focussing fiercely on that one tiny spot of overriding pleasure. His tongue slips inside me and my body tenses at the unexpected intrusion before avidly relaxing into it, slicking in response.
> 
> He usually likes to watch me react to his ministrations but now his eyes are closed and rapture is what I read on his face. It’s such a turn on, I can barely watch through my heavy lids for fear of spontaneous combustion.
> The shallow penetration of his smooth tongue is doubly erotic because I can watch his face contorted with pleasure while he’s devouring me. He breaks the contact and gently blows on my sensitive, heated flesh, cooling but not calming. I whimper, violent desire slamming into me.


E.L. James, Fifty Shades of Grey

P.S. Out of shame I must include that I'm not currently reading this book and never have, I just stumbled upon some of it online.


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## Damagedfinger (Oct 27, 2013)

Disgusting, it just ruins true imagination and real interest when reading a book. Sickening, I read to learn and to imagine an intelligent world with useful facts and information. These types of books ruin the art of learning and love for it.


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## Children Of The Bad Revolution (Oct 8, 2013)

Damagedfinger said:


> Disgusting, it just ruins true imagination and real interest when reading a book. Sickening, I read to learn and to imagine an intelligent world with useful facts and information. These types of books ruin the art of learning and love for it.


Some people read different books for different reasons. Why are you judging other people for reading books? Good for you if you read to 'learn', some people read to be entertained.


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## Koboremi (Sep 8, 2013)

"WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH"
-1984, George Orwell


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## Praelatus (Jul 4, 2013)

isingthebodyelectric said:


> Some people read different books for different reasons. Why are you judging other people for reading books? Good for you if you read to 'learn', some people read to be entertained.


When did he judge anyone? Everyone should as a rule of thumb always assume people are talking on a subjective level when discussing any kind of art. He's not really saying that Fifty Shades ruins books for _everyone_, just himself.

Anyways, when it comes to erotic novels in the POV of a female, you can't expect understanding from males. It may as well be a different language that is capable only of conveying disgust to us. It's entertaining only in a curious morbid sense, not dissimilar to watching 2 Girls 1 Cup or Japanese toilet porn.


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## Children Of The Bad Revolution (Oct 8, 2013)

Praelatus said:


> When did he judge anyone? Everyone should as a rule of thumb always assume people are talking on a subjective level when discussing any kind of art. He's obviously not saying Fifty Shades ruins books for everyone because some people read it. It's purely on his end.
> 
> Anyways, when it comes to erotic novels in the POV of a female, you can't expect understanding from males. It may as well be a different language that is capable only of conveying disgust to us.


Disgust is a strong word. Why do you feel like that? Sexuality/female sexuality provokes an emotion of disgust?


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## Praelatus (Jul 4, 2013)

isingthebodyelectric said:


> Disgust is a strong word. Why do you feel like that? Sexuality/female sexuality provokes an emotion of disgust?


Cunnilingus is just nasty to me as I'm sure fellatio is to some females. I don't want my face anywhere near a vagina.

Other than that, no, I'm not really disgusted by sexuality or specifically female sexuality.


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## illow (Dec 23, 2012)

"Appropriateness is merely an approximate concept"

Changes, Goerge lenon.WD


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## Children Of The Bad Revolution (Oct 8, 2013)

Praelatus said:


> Cunnilingus is just nasty to me as I'm sure fellatio is to some females. I don't want my face anywhere near a vagina.
> 
> Other than that, no, I'm not really disgusted by sexuality or specifically female sexuality.


That's a shame you feel that way. It's a beautiful thing, as is fellatio. Unfortunately, alot of men (too many) feel that way and then unfairly expect women to give them blowjobs.

You clearly are disgusted by female sexually if you're disgusted by vaginas and don't want to be near them. Of course that's your choice, though.

Sent from my HTC Sensation Z710e using Tapatalk


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## Praelatus (Jul 4, 2013)

isingthebodyelectric said:


> That's a shame you feel that way. It's a beautiful thing, as is fellatio. Unfortunately, alot of men (too many) feel that way and then unfairly expect women to give them blowjobs.
> 
> You clearly are disgusted by female sexually if you're disgusted by vaginas and don't want to be near them. Of course that's your choice, though.


It would only be a shame to me if I actually thought it were beautiful, which by any definition I don't. I'm not one of those guys, if that's your implication, and I hinted at that earlier by saying some girls find fellatio repulsive as I do cunnilingus.

As for "if you're disgusted by vaginas and don't want to be near them", I'm not... on either count. I specifically don't want my face to be near them as I said before, not my entire body. It really isn't a choice, though. I didn't decide it any more than I decide to enjoy a certain movie.


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## associative (Jul 1, 2013)

A Skylark said:


> Chapter 38. Ahab's speech-thingy and the ship's reaction are some of my favourite parts in the whole book, though my very favourite would have to be Chapter 132, The Symphony. Moby Dick is good at having these small, but beautiful chunks of storytelling sandwiched between huge chunks of whale nonsense. Keep going, though- in the end, soooo worth it!


Reading Moby Dick is an allegory for a whaling voyage: brief instances of excitement punctuating long periods of boredom.


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## Cosmic Hobo (Feb 7, 2013)

associative said:


> Reading Moby Dick is an allegory for a whaling voyage: brief instances of excitement punctuating long periods of boredom.


Think about how much you're learning about church pew carvings, ambergris, and whales in mythology!


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## A Skylark (Jan 16, 2013)

Cosmic Hobo said:


> Think about how much you're learning about church pew carvings, ambergris, and whales in mythology!


Hehe, yes, and why whales should be considered fish, not mammals.


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## Children Of The Bad Revolution (Oct 8, 2013)

"To the red country and part of the gray country of Oklahoma, the last rains came gently, and they did not cut the scarred earth. The plows crossed and recrossed the rivulet marks. The last rains lifted the corn quickly and scattered weed colonies and grass along the sides of the roads so that the gray country and the dark red country began to disappear under a green cover. In the last part of May the sky grew pale and the clouds that had hung in high puffs for so long in the spring were disappated. The sun flared down on the growing corn each day after day until a line of brown spread along the edge of each green bayonet. The clouds appeared, and went away, and in a while they did not try any more. The weeds grew darker green to protect themselves, and they did not spread any more. The surface of the earth crusted, a thin hard crust, and as the sky became pale, so the earth became pale, pink in the red country and white in the gray country."

- The Grapes of Wrath / John Steinbeck


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## Maryll (Sep 12, 2013)

"Having intelligence, we must not act in ignorance. Having choice, we must not act without responsibility. Who am I -though I have the power to do it - to punish and reward, playing with men's destinies?"

Ursula K. Le Guin - Earthsea: The farthest shore


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## android654 (Jan 19, 2010)

associative said:


> Reading Moby Dick is an allegory for a whaling voyage: brief instances of excitement punctuating long periods of boredom.


Moby Dick is actually about capitalism and the destructive ends one (Ahab and his financial backers) will go in the pursuit of a goal (greed and control, the extinction of the 'other,' of competition).






Social Criticism and Nineteenth-Century American Fictions - Robert Shulman - Google Books


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"Hazel's obsession with Hoosiers around the world was a textbook example of a false _karass, _of a seeming team that was meaningless in terms of the ways God gets things done, a textbook example of what Bokonon calls a _granfalloon. _Other exampl_es _of_ granfalloons _are the Communist party, the Daughters of the American Revolution, the General Electric Company, the International Order of Odd Fellows--and any nation, anytime, anywhere."

And:

"But there was one sentence they kept coming back to again and again in the loyalty hearing," sighed Minton. "'Americans,'" he said, quoting his wife;s letter to the _Times_, "'are forever searching for love in forms it never takes =, in places it can never be. It must have something to do with the vanished frontier.'"

Kurt Vonnegut ~ Cat's Cradle


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## HypoTempes (Nov 25, 2013)

Some said Delana was sucessful as a mediator because both sides would agree just to make her stop staring at them.

<--- Robert Jordan, WoT series, book: Lord of Chaos


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## Writer of Words (Dec 2, 2013)

"All around her, trees and stone and flesh burned with the power that burned her, self-awareness, which death can seem to stop but can never keep from happening, no matter how hard it tries." - Diane Duane, _So You Want to Be a Wizard_


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## The Scorched Earth (May 17, 2010)

"My suffering left me sad and gloomy."


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## pond (Nov 8, 2013)

" Then I noticed a small plate of complimentary marsh-mallows near Chloe's elbow and it suddenly seemed clear that I didn't love Chloe so much as marshmallow her. What it was about a marshmallow that should suddenly have accorded so perfectly with my feelings towards her I will never know, but the word seemed to capture the essence of my amorous state with an accuracy that the word love, weary with overuse, simply could not aspire to. Even more inexplicably, when I took Chloe's hand and told her that I had something very important to tell her, that I marshmallowed her, she seemed to understand perfectly, answering it was the sweetest thing anyone had ever told her."


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## sinshred (Dec 1, 2013)

“All bands eventually break up because of one or more of the four P's: power, property, prestiege, pussy.”

“You don't shit where you eat, and you don't try to fuck your bandmate's fiancée. Especially when your bandmate is your boss.”

Dave Mustaine : A Heavy Metal Memoir


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## digitalroses (Dec 7, 2013)

“The Answer to the Great Question... Of Life, the Universe and Everything... Is... Forty-two,' said Deep Thought, with infinite majesty and calm. 

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, one of my faves


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## fattrezaihsan (Dec 18, 2013)

"_Man shabara zhafira_"
WHO BE PATIENCE THAT HE WILL LUCKY

"Do not worry suffering today, live it and see what will come. Because we aim at is not present but the larger and principal. That is, be a man who has found his mission in life"
(A. Fuadi)


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## Bri Stewart (Dec 3, 2013)

“Martin heaved a sigh of relief when the door closed behind the laundryman. He was becoming anti-social. Daily he found it a severer strain to be decent with people. Their presence perturbed him, and the effort of conversation irritated him. They made him restless, and no sooner was he in contact with them than he was casting about for excuses to get rid of them.” 

-Martin Eden by Jack London


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## Cyeran (Jul 20, 2013)

"The old sailors who traveled Earth's seas were said to have loved the ocean. The great captains said they were married to the sea or called the sea their mistress. Modern sailors held no such fantasies about outer space. Space did not love or hate, it simply killed anything it touched"

Steven L. Kent - "Clone Alliance"


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## nádej (Feb 27, 2011)

"It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from." - C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces


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## Orange Fusion (Nov 16, 2013)

“There are some people who can be merry and can’t be wise, and some who can be wise (or think they can) and can’t be merry. I’m one of the first sort.” --Character: _Dick Swiveller_
_The Old Curiosity Shop_


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