I'm pretty sure I did this last year, so here goes again. Imagine your novel published with quotations at the begining. What would those quotations be? Here're mine for this year:
And he asked him, What is thy name? And he answered, saying, My name is Legion: for we are many.
- Mark 41:5:9
Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,
(I am large, I contain multitudes.)
- Walt Whitman
Let the mad poets say whate’er they please
Of the sweets of Faeries, Peris, Goddesses,
There is not such a treat among them all,
Haunters of cavern, lake, and waterfall,
As a real woman...
- John Keats
Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream.
Ha, ha, fooled you! I’m a submarine.
- schoolyard chant
The smile you are smiling you were smiling then, but I can’t remember where or when.
- Lorenz Hart
There may be more to follow.
Love and admiration,
Jay
----------
50,032 / 50,000
Nov 8, 2008 - 09 47
I found a few I like. This first one would be my favorite, and the one that would start my book I think:
"When I was alive, I believed - as you do - that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said 'one o'clock' as though I could see it, and 'Monday' as if I could find it on the map. Like everyone else I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes and New Year's Days, and I never went outside because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls."
-Peter S. Beagle: "The Last Unicorn."
"The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.”
-Albert Einstein
“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living.”
-Dr. Seuss
"Do not meddle in the affairs of wizards, for they are subtle and quick to anger. "
J.R.R. Tolkien: "The Fellowship of the Ring"
"Still round the corner there may wait, a new road or a secret gate."
J.R.R. Tolkien
"A truly wise man never plays leapfrog with a unicorn."
-----------Banacek
72,287 / 50,000
Nov 8, 2008 - 11 42
These were going to be included in an early, early draft of my 2004 NaNo novel and since this year's is a sequel, they're still appropriate:
“Life is a banquet, and most poor bastards are starving!”
- Mame Dennis Burnside
Mona Ramsey’s Three Rules of Life: “You can have a hot job, a hot lover, and a hot apartment, but never all three at the same time.”
- Armistead Maupin
“Life can be like getting hit upside the head with a frozen haddock: both can be cold, both can be hard, and both can hurt.”
- Brian Parker-Eddy (my MC)
“Life. Don’t talk to me about life.”
----------- Marvin the Paranoid Android
2004 - But I Never Said I Didn't Love You! - W
2005 - I've Told You That I Love You, Haven't I? - W
2006 - Forever Isn't Long Enough - W
2007 - The Gay Man's Guide To Love, Cats, and Other Mysteries - W
2008 - I Love It When You Say Those Things - W
8,119 / 50,000
Nov 8, 2008 - 16 16
His life was gentle; and the elements
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up,
And say to all the world, THIS WAS A MAN!
William Shakespeare
Greatest English dramatist & poet (1564 - 1616)
Life being what it is, one dreams of revenge.
Paul Gauguin
French Post-Impressionist painter (1848 - 1903)
Revenge is a kind of wild justice, which the more man's nature runs to the more ought law to weed it out.
Sir Francis Bacon
English author, courtier, & philosopher (1561 - 1626)
I have about 12 characters, all with distinct personalities and goals... but these quotes seem to be universal to the story.
----------My novel keeps alternating between depressing dark humor, wry light humor, and extreme violence. It basically mirrors my life. Except for the extreme violence part.
30,000 / 50,000
Nov 8, 2008 - 18 10
“Alice laughed. There’s no use trying,” she said: “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was your age, I always did it for a half-hour a day. Why, sometimes I believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast!”
-----------from Through The Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll
Emily W.
Novel 2007: Deep In The Dark (winner!)
Novel 2008: Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast
50,134 / 50,000
Nov 8, 2008 - 21 39
Here are a couple of my favorites.
Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences.
--J.K. Rowling
If there is a bedrock principle underlying the First Amendment, it is that government may not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society finds the idea offensive or disagreeable.
--Justice William J. Brennan, Jr.
Almost all human beings have an infinite capacity for taking things for granted.
--Aldous Huxley
Most critics are responsible and thoughtful, but a significant minority resents thinking, because the time devoted to thinking inevitably means fewer hours in the day for swilling down booze and torturing kittens.
---Dean Koontz
56,435 / 50,000
Nov 9, 2008 - 17 39
My quote is not as profound as those above, but it really fits the story (other than the name Humpty of course)
"All the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Humpty together again."
72,663 / 50,000
Nov 13, 2008 - 17 51
I came across this one in some book I was reading and it fit my book, so it does lead with-
...And we are here as on a darkling plain
Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,
Where ignorant armies clash by night.
("Dover Beach")
Not a quotation, though, a citation.
----------JanNoWriMo07 - Still Waters Run Deep - >70,000 won (didn't know there was a group!)
AugNoWriMo07 - The Wreck of the Day ->50,000 won (over on Proboards)
NaNoWriMo07 - Fever ->65,670 won.
NaNoWriMo08 - Abracadabra - >72,663 won
1,524 / 50,000
Nov 13, 2008 - 17 55
the truth is in
the proof is when
you hear your heart start asking,
"What´s my motivation?"
Newsboys - Shine
Well, right now, my brain is asking me why I am demanding so much of it... then I feed it chocolate, and it shuts up.
[Its more of a favorite lyric that applies. ;) ]