Junkyard Quotes: Week of 2/14/11

1) The broad-backed hippopotamus

Rests on his belly in the mud;

Although he seems so firm to us

He is merely flesh and blood.

-T. S. Eliot, "The Hippopotamus"

There's a great deal more to this poem than just these opening lines, more meaning than what I'm remarking on here, but how he phrased the firmness of the hippopotamus. So often as an aspiring writer, I've been told to place my efforts in something more worthwhile, more tangible and of the "real world" instead of my imagination, and I constantly feel that the output of our imagination, our intellect, our emotions, all of those intangible things are what last long after the physical crust is aged and gone.

2) Nearby, across the river, a lark had begun to twitter and climb. It was morning. A blackbird called one or two deep, slow notes and was followed by a wood pigeon. Soon they were in a gray twilight and could see that the stream bordered the further edge of the wood. On the other side lay open fields.

-Richard Adams, Watership Down

There are some passages in published fiction that feel so perfectly placed, so understatedly set up and gracefully delivered, that they stand out at me even more so than passages where great dialogues or epic events occur. This chapter's end in Watership Down is one that is so simple, yet given the events that came before and the events that will follow, there is such a strong sense of the story's full circle actively in play that it gives me an enormous sense of satisfaction to experience it with Hazel, the point-of-view character. Writers like Adams illustrate how rewarding the simplest lines and dialogue can be, when deftly placed to build character, plot and theme.

3) His face was that of one who has undergone a long journey.

-The Epic of Gilgamesh

This is such a simple line, yet it evokes such a great visual, such a strong sense of identity.

4) What is now proved was once only imagin'd.

-William Blake, "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell"

There is more about this line that I love than I can ever express. It will never be made obsolete.

5) There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.

-John Hersey, Hiroshima.

I've had this book for years. This is the last line of the first chapter. I can't quite pinpoint why this has stayed with me.