Welcome back to Thursday Quotables! This weekly feature is the place to highlight a great quote, line, or passage discovered during your reading each week. Whether it’s something funny, startling, gut-wrenching, or just really beautifully written, Thursday Quotables is where my favorite lines of the week will be, and you’re invited to join in!
NEW! Thursday Quotables is now using a Linky tool! Be sure to add your link if you have a Thursday Quotables post to share.
Stardust by Neil Gaiman
(published 1999 )
I’m listening to the audiobook of Stardust, narrated by Neil Himself, and it’s just a delight. It’s been many years since I first read Stardust, and I’d forgotten how sweet and funny and sly it can be — and also eerie and moody and dangerous. Here are but a few little selections that either gave me the chills or made me chuckle. And they all just sound so good when read out loud:
He summoned his children to his bedside and they came, the living and the dead of them, and they shivered in the cold granite halls. They gathered about his bed and waited respectfully, the living to his right side, the dead on his left.
Or for a lighter mood:
“I knowed a man in Paphlagonia who’d swallow a live snake every morning, when he got up. He used to say, he was certain of one thing, that nothing worse would happen to him all day. ‘Course they made him eat a bowlful of hairy centipedes before they hung him, so maybe that claim was a bit presumptive.”
One more bit of conversation:
Tristran thought for some moments, and then he said, “I come from the village of Wall, where there lives a young lady named Victoria Forester, who is without peer among women, and it is to her, and to her alone, that I have given my heart. Her face is– ”
“Usual complement of bits?” asked the little creature. “Eyes? Nose? Teeth? All the usual?”
“Of course.”
“Well then, you can skip that stuff,” said the little hairy man.
What lines made you laugh, cry, or gasp this week? Do tell!
If you’d like to participate in Thursday Quotables, it’s really simple:
- Write a Thursday Quotables post on your blog. Try to pick something from whatever you’re reading now. And please be sure to include a link back to Bookshelf Fantasies in your post (http://www.bookshelffantasies.com), if you’d be so kind!
- Click on the linky button (look for the cute froggie face) below to add your link.
- After you link up, I’d love it if you’d leave a comment about my quote for this week.
- Be sure to visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!
Bookshelf Fantasies 
I LOVE your quotes! The last one is hilarious! 😛 I like the second one two when he think it’s a bit presumptive, and the first one when they include the dead relatives, ha ha. I mean, okaaay….. x
I agree, that last one (and the whole scene it’s from) made me laugh. (Alone, in my car, while driving — I may have looked a bit mad.) 🙂 It’s a really fun book!
I won’t comment on Gaiman’s stories because they are just outside any standard and I don’t want to become sappy. I just love him.
I’ve owned Stardust for many years, haven’t read it yet, and I’m almost happy for this, because now that I know Neil Himself has read the audiobook, I’m going to hunt it down 🙂
Thanks so much for sharing.
I agree, Gaiman is outside the norm and is just amazing. And not only can he write, but he’s a great reader as well! I’m really enjoying his narration, and since I’ve heard that he does a lot of his own audiobooks, I think I’ll be tracking down more after this.