Thursday Quotables: A Breath of Snow and Ashes

Posted in Outlander, Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

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!

Source:

A Breath of Snow and Ashes (Outlander, #6)

A Breath of Snow and Ashes
Diana Gabaldon
2005

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!
Leave your link in the comments — or, if you have a quote to share but not a blog post, you can leave your quote in the comments too!
Visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

10Apr2014

Thursday Quotables: The Serpent of Venice

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

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!

The Serpent of Venice by Christopher Moore
(to be released April 22, 2014)

Dying in his cellar and being eaten by rats was not enough punishment for Brabantio. For the first time I hoped that there was an afterlife, and he could look up through the sulfurous clouds of Hell to watch me unwind his plots, drain his power, and extinguish the light of his legacy.

Intense, right? On a lighter note:

“Cry havoc, and let slip the trousers of most outrageous bonkilation!” said the queen, throwing off the sash of her gown and stepping out of it. “Off with your kit, fool!”

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!
Leave your link in the comments — or, if you have a quote to share but not a blog post, you can leave your quote in the comments too!
Visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

3Apr2014

Thursday Quotables: The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

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!

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Andrew McCall Smith

We don’t forget, thought Mma Ramotswe. Our heads may be small, but they are as full of memories as the sky may sometimes be full of swarming bees, thousands and thousands of memories, of smells, of places, of little things that happened to us and which come back, unexpectedly, to remind us who we are.

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!
Leave your link in the comments — or, if you have a quote to share but not a blog post, you can leave your quote in the comments too!
Visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

27Mar2014

Thursday Quotables: Grasshopper Jungle

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

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!

Grasshopper Jungle by Andrew Smith

The National Guardsmen’s machine guns spit bursts of metal-jacketed bullets at the Unstoppable Soldiers. The sound was electric and terrifying. The bullets may just as well have been candy sprinkles on unstoppable frosted cupcakes, because they had absolutely no effect at all on the monstrous praying mantis beasts with blade-spiked arms.

Tyler Jacobson and Travis Pope walked through the spray of bullets like they were cats walking through darkness; like beauty pageant queens parading through swirling showers of glitter.

My review of this strange and wonderful book is here.

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!
Leave your link in the comments — or, if you have a quote to share but not a blog post, you can leave your quote in the comments too!
Visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

20Mar2014

Thursday Quotables: Night Broken

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

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!

Night Broken by Patricia Briggs

My hands hurt, my hip hurt, my cheek throbbed, and someone had thrown a finger at me — and I hadn’t eaten today. Adam’s hand curled around the top of my knee, and I relaxed and let myself drift off. Nothing was so bad that Adam’s touch couldn’t make it better. Even if he wouldn’t let me give Christy to the fire-dog from hell.

Just a typical day in the life of Mercy Thompson!

And in what I assume is a shout-out to one of my other favorite characters in urban fantasy:

The lawyer’s assistant, who was scribbling down notes, lit right up. “Magic is supposed to affect electricity like that. I’ve read that wizards can’t be in the same room with things like computers and stuff.”

I knew where she’d read that. I bit my lip. It was to our advantage to spread a little misinformation whenever we could.

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!
Leave your link in the comments — or, if you have a quote to share but not a blog post, you can leave your quote in the comments too!
Visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

12Mar2014

Thursday Quotables: Sunrise

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

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!

Sunrise by Mike Mullin
(to be released April 15, 2014)

Sunrise is the final book in the Ashfall series, a powerful young adult trilogy in which a supervolcano explodes and turns most of the country into a snow- and ash-covered barren landscape. A band of survivors struggles to find a way to get by, but starvation, illness, and violence lurk around every corner.

And yet… it may be the end of the world as we know it, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a lighter moment once in a while:

“This foolish proposal illustrates why you should vote for experience over youth. Why you should return to office a trusted leader with almost a decade of experience leading this town. You can choose a man you know and trust or a boy who can’t even grow a proper beard yet.”

That was not exactly true. I couldn’t grow any kind of beard, let alone a proper one.

And on a more romantic note:

I took Darla in my arms, and she crushed me against her body. The world around us was frozen, quiet, and still, as if the last point of warmth in the universe burned between her chest and mine.

Intrigued? My blog tour post and review will be up this Saturday!

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!
Leave your link in the comments — or, if you have a quote to share but not a blog post, you can leave your quote in the comments too!
Visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

26Feb2014

Thursday Quotables: The Husband’s Secret

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

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!

The Husband’s Secret by Liane Moriarty
(published 2013)

I’m right in the middle of reading this one, and mixed in with all of the really moving family moments, there are quite a few funny bits too:

One of the mums from school, who had three sons almost exactly the same ages as Cecilia’s three daughters, had said that some remark Cecilia had made was a “teeny weeny bit sexist,” just before they started the Fete Committee meeting last week. Cecilia couldn’t remember what she’d said, but she’d only been joking. Anyway, weren’t women allowed to be sexist for the next two thousand years or so, until they’d evened up the score?

And another:

Actually, what she remembered most about that trip to Berlin was kissing a handsome, brown-haired German boy in a nightclub. He kept taking ice cubes from his drink and running them across her collarbone, which at the time had seemed incredibly sexy, but now seemed unhygienic and sticky.

Can’t resist:

Cecilia had noticed that beautiful women held themselves differently; they swayed like palm trees in the breeze of all that attention. Cecilia wanted her daughters to run and stride and stomp. She didn’t want Polly to bloody sway.

Last one! Short but sweet:

She was a far better mother when she had an audience.

I’m really not all that far into the book yet — but based on how many lines are making me laugh or kind of shake my head in recognition, I’m betting that I’ll keep on enjoying it.

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!
Leave your link in the comments — or, if you have a quote to share but not a blog post, you can leave your quote in the comments too!
Visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

20Feb2014

Thursday Quotables: Fahrenheit 451

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

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!

Fahrenheit 451

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
(first published 1950)

Montag looked at these men whose faces were sunburnt by a thousand real and ten thousand imaginary fires, whose work flushed their cheeks and fevered their eyes. These men who looked steadily into their platinum igniter flames as they lit their eternally burning black pipes. They and their charcoal hair and soot-colored brows and bluish-ash-smeared cheeks where they had shaven close; but their heritage showed. Montag started up, his mouth opened. Had he ever,seen a fireman that didn’t have black hair, black brows, a fiery face, and a blue-steel shaved but unshaved look? These men were all mirror images of himself! Were all firemen picked then for their looks as well as their proclivities? The color of cinders and ash about them, and the continual smell of burning from their pipes.

It seems like everyone know the first line of Fahrenheit 451:

It was a pleasure to burn.

But who remembers how incredibly Bradbury describes the world of this book and the people in it? I’ve just started a reread of Fahrenheit 451, and I thought I remembered quite a bit, but I was wrong. I keep finding passages, like the one above, in which Bradbury captures a look, a moment or a feeling in such startling, sharply drawn images and words. I’m so delighted that I’m treating myself to the pleasure of reading this amazing book again after so many years!

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!
Leave your link in the comments — or, if you have a quote to share but not a blog post, you can leave your quote in the comments too!
Visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

13Feb2014

Thursday Quotables: The Fiery Cross

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

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!

The Fiery Cross by Diana Gabaldon
(first published 2001)

I’m in the midst of a major fit of Outlander obsession, just finishing a super-speedy re-read of The Fiery Cross (book #5 in the series). There are so many quotable moments, especially when it comes to Jamie and Claire. This one is just perfect, I think, and always makes me sigh.

PS – I loved this passage so much, I just had to decorate it! My graphic design abilities are pretty limited, but I do like the way this one came out!

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!
Leave your link in the comments — or, if you have a quote to share but not a blog post, you can leave your quote in the comments too!
Visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!

6Feb2014

Thursday Quotables: Archetype

Posted in Thursday Quotables by Lisa @ Bookshelf Fantasies

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!

Archetype

Archetype by M. D. Waters
Release date: February 6, 2014

His lips part to say something, but I cannot wait any longer. I kiss him. He does not stop it, but his hands hover over my cheeks as if debating it. Finally — finally — his hands tighten on either side of my head and his return kiss is desperate. This kiss feels as if it is my first breath after a lifetime of being forced to hold it. I want to cry and laugh and scream and claw and crawl inside him. I do not care that I do not understand what has happened, because nothing matters more than being with him in this moment. Holding him. Feeling him. Tasting him.

Wow. Steamy, right?

Happy book birthday to Archetype! Be sure to check out my review of this smart, sexy, and altogether mesmerizing new science fiction novel!

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!
Leave your link in the comments — or, if you have a quote to share but not a blog post, you can leave your quote in the comments too!
Visit other linked blogs to view their Thursday Quotables, and have fun!