Fantasy Buddy Reads discussion

One of my best friends who has an excellent memory and penchant for quoting passages from books recently got her first tattoo. We were talking about impactful scenes from books that we would like to capture on skin, and how some of them are great scenes but don't have readily quotable lines.

What lines and passages are your favorite? Which ones do you find yourself returning to? Would you or have you gotten a tattoo of a line from a book?

I suppose I should contribute some of my own.

This scene from Daughter of the Forest, which made an appearance last time I gathered at the park to read aloud with friends.
In a moment of anguish:
(view spoiler)["At last I sank to the ground by the great willow, and covered my face with my hands. My shoulders were shaking, and my nose was running, and the tears would not stop. If I sat there long enough, perhaps I would become part of this tree, a weeping tree-girl that cried each night by the water. Perhaps I would vanish into the soft earth of the riverbank, and in my place reeds would grow, slender and silver-gray, and if a man fashioned a pipe from these reeds, it would sing too late, too late. (hide spoiler)]
I like the tragic, fairy-tale quality to it.

Pretty much every page of The Song of Achilles.
(view spoiler)[ His fingers touched the strings and all my thoughts were displaced. The sound was pure and sweet as water, bright as lemons. It was like no music I had ever heard before. It had warmth as a fire does, a texture and weight like polished ivory. It buoyed and soothed at once. (hide spoiler)]

There are so many. I typically have at least a few quotable lines from most of the books I read. I usually prefer dialogue to prose, but there are definitely places where the prose is excellent. No I wouldn't get a tattoo of a quote, but that's mostly because I'm not really interested in getting a tattoo in the first place. Also I would keep whining about the font and double think it for the rest of my life.

Terry Pratchett;

WHAT CAN THE HARVEST HOPE FOR, IF NOT THE CARE OF THE REAPER MAN?

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.

Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.

"The presence of those seeking the truth is infinitely to be preferred to the presence of those who think they've found it.”

If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.

"Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.”

"The reason that clichés become clichés is that they are the hammers and screwdrivers in the toolbox of communication.”

T. Kingfisher;

"But he's mad, completely mad, and he turns his wives into golems. He needs killing, not negotiation.”

Seanan McGuire

(Australia. The only continent designed with a difficulty rating of “ha ha fuck you no.”)

"Go tell your father that Grandma needs the grenades.”

Sarah Rees Brennan;

"Put the jerk in the south wing, you won't see him for weeks at a time. Or lock him in the attic. The law will not be on your side, but literary precedent will.”

“Jared glared. Some people, Kami knew, had bedroom eyes. She was saddened to have to admit that Jared had filthy alleyway eyes.”

If I show consideration for others," Lillian Lynburn said grumpily, "will you tell me again about how you shot my husband?"
Jon rolled his eyes. "Yes, Leigh, if you manage to approximate human behavior for half an hour, I will tell you your favorite story again.”

"She'd felt like being nice cost her something, even if it was just feeling a little bit lesser, every time she smiled without meaning to.”

"She’d always thought she was sensible about romance: she hadn’t ever wanted any sort of wild destructive passion that would interfere with college applications. She had thought love would change the story she told about herself too much, that love would make her story less smart or less meaningful. She’d had Jared in her head all the time, though. She’d had love already. Only those who already had love could afford to dismiss it.”

"I love you,” said Aunt Lillian. “And I’m sorry you were buried alive. I hope you get over it quickly”

"He's not gone," said Jared.

"Oh, and how do you figure that?" Kami demanded. "He seems pretty gone to me."

"When my Dad died... When he died, he wasn't gone. My mom and I could never be what we might have been without him. He stayed like a shadow in every corner of our home, stayed a stain in our hearts. I felt it. I can't believe that good will leave us when evil remains. I will not. I do not.”

Courtney Milan:

"I'm not difficult," Violet said. "I'm simple. I like good books and clever conversation and being left alone much of the time. How does that make me difficult? I make sense? I don't talk about my feelings, of course, but then, I don't want to." She shrugged. "So that's reasonable."

Sebastian smiled despite himself, a smile that felt bitter even to him. "God, no. Not feelings. Heaven forbid that you have anything so messy."

"I have feelings." She spoke stiffly. "I just don't talk about them. What's the point? Talking never changes them.”

"Is it a thorny question of ethics? Or is it the sort of ethical question where the right choice is easy, but the unethical answer is too tempting?”

"This has been hard and painful and horrible. But I've learned that I'm stronger than hard, better than pain, and that with enough luck, horrible can go away.”

If eyes were windows to the soul, hers had been bricked up to avoid taxation.

Lois McMaster Bujold:

"Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can't trade for your heart's desire is your heart.”

"I am who I choose to be. I have always been what I chose, though not always what I pleased.”

"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself. There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That's soul-destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating.

Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.”

"When the time comes to leap in faith whether you have your eyes open or closed or scream all the way down or not makes no practical difference.”

"I don't want power. I just object to idiots having power over me.”

The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present — they are real.

"I do think, half of what we call madness is just some poor slob dealing with pain by a strategy that annoys the people around him.”

"Not that I haven't leaped up into the blinding light of competence now and then. It's sustaining the altitude that defeats me.”

"Now, there's this about cynicism, Sergeant. It's the universe's most supine moral position. Real comfortable. If nothing can be done, then you're not some kind of shit for not doing it, and you can lie there and stink to yourself in perfect peace.”

“Women shouldn't be in combat," said Vorkosigan, grimly glum, "Neither should men, in my opinion.”

"The man who assumes everything is a lie is at least as mistaken as the one who assumes everything is true.”

Squee! Ah, leave it to you Sha, to bestow this epic quote trove! And oh my, yes, if we include dialogue, there are so many more~ Especially the humorous ones. So many good quips and bouts of banter. Alas, I don't have a ready compilation of my favorites to share. I wish I could remember some snappy one-liners or rejoinders off the top of my head...

This classic exchange from The Last Unicorn tho:

"I'm engaged," Schmendrick excused himself. "To a western larch. Since childhood. Marriage by contract, no choice in the matter. Hopeless. Our story is never to be."

A gust of fury shook the oak, as though a storm were coming to it alone. "Galls and fireblight on her!" it whispered savagely. "Damned softwood, cursed conifer, deceitful evergreen, she'll never have you! We will perish together, and all trees shall treasure our tragedy!"

This are some of my favourites.

1.) “A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, A Dance with Dragons

2.) “How did you die?"
"We er....drowned in a bathtub."
"All three of you?"
"It was a big bathtub.”
― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

3.) “Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

4.) “The world is not a wish-granting factory.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars

5.) “Never seen Jason fly before," Percy grumbled. "He looks like a blond Superman”
― Rick Riordan, The Mark of Athena

6.) “There are two motives for reading a book; one, that you enjoy it; the other, that you can boast about it.”
― Bertrand Russell

7.) “How do you tell a dream from a nightmare? If it involves a book burning , it's probably a nightmare.”
― Rick Riordan, The Tyrant's Tomb

8.) “But what is a dream, Conor O'Malley? the monster said, bending down so it's face was close to Conor's. Who is to say that it is not everything else that is the dream?”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster

9.) “There was once an invisible man who had grown tired of being unseen. It was not that he was actually invisible. It was that people had become used to not seeing him.

And if no one sees you, are you really there at all?"”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

10.) “Your mind will believe comforting lies while also knowing the painful truths that make those lies necessary. And your mind will punish you for believing both.”
― Patrick Ness, A Monster Calls

Love that John green quote

I'm currently re-reading Vicious by V.E. Schwab... it has so many quotable lines. This is one of my favorites:

The moments that define lives aren’t always obvious. They don’t always scream LEDGE, and nine times out of ten there’s no rope to duck under, no line to cross, no blood pact, no official letter on fancy paper. They aren’t always protracted, heavy with meaning. Between one sip and the next, Victor made the biggest mistake of his life, and it was made of nothing more than one line. Three small words. “I’ll go first.”