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.
A Farewell To Arms by Ernest Hemingway
(published 1929)
I’m only on chapter two at this point — but I’ve never read Hemingway before, and I really enjoyed this paragraph from the very first page:
In the late summer of that year we lived in a house in a village that looked across the river and the plain to the mountains. In the bed of the river there were pebbles and boulders, dry and white in the sun, and the water was clear and swiftly moving and blue in the channels. Troops went by the house and down the road and the dust they raised powdered the leaves of the trees. The trunks of the trees too were dusty and the leaves fell early that year and we saw the troops marching along the road and the dust rising and leaves, stirred by the breeze, falling and the soldiers marching and afterward the road bare and white except for the leaves.
I have no idea what to expect, but I’m intrigued by the writing style and want to know more!
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 
It is always so hard to judge the classics. But I’ve learned that there is always a reason why a classic is a classic.
Beautiful passage, beautiful prose and great layering of meanings.
I don’t have a quotable up this week, but have you seen mine of last week? 🙂
http://theoldshelter.com/thursday-quotables-the-wolf-in-the-attic/
I really loved that book
Thanks for sharing the link for last week! Things have been crazy, and I’ve missed a lot…
I believe the power of the classics are their opening lines and passages. Really – they will mostly grasp you from the first page. Like this one. Beautiful writing! I have’t read A Farewell to Arms. Yet. Keep us posted on your progress! I’ve just linked my Thursday Quotable too: http://marelithalkink.blogspot.co.za/2016/08/thursday-quotables-2-that-cursed-book.html
Thanks so much! I’m reading this one with my book group, and we’re doing two chapters per week, so it’s going to take a while. (I may need to read ahead to get into the rhythm of the story.)
It’s such a descriptive quote, you can almost feel everything and see it. I think the only Hemingway I’ve read so far is his memoir A Moveable Feast.
Here’s my Quotable: it’s about whether virtuous characters can be compelling without destroying their virtue
Thanks for sharing your link! For the Hemingway, I haven’t quite gotten into the rhythm of it yet (this is a book group read, and we’re discussing two chapters per week), but I’m looking forward to getting more into the heart of the story.
Thanks for sharing the quote and for hosting Thursday Quotables! I’ve never read Hemingway, either, but that quote makes me a little more motivated to do so. I really like the rhythm of it. I always love it when writers match the style of their writing to the content of it.
Here’s my Thursday Quotable: https://literaryleisure.wordpress.com/2016/08/18/thursday-quotables-when-baking-gets-you-summoned-to-court/
Thanks! I really do think I’m going to enjoy this book, although I need to get further into it to get the full picture. 🙂