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18216. TheWizardOfWhimsy - 1/14/2006 6:14:42 PM Of course the cat also keeps our marriage together. Neither of us want to get stuck with him.
Boy, can I ever relate in the getting-stuck-with-a-screwy-cat department. Also, marrying a liberal Democrat might have helped somewhat too, no?
18217. arkymalarky - 1/14/2006 6:45:24 PM I've found that hysterectomies really help. 18218. judithathome - 1/14/2006 7:25:24 PM Heh...do they ever! ;-) 18219. alistairConnor - 1/14/2006 11:09:15 PM well, I never said "I told you so".
But I got stuck with the cat anyway. 18220. jayackroyd - 1/15/2006 2:44:07 AM That phrase is one that should be banned entirely. If the person to whom it's directed doesn't realize that he or she was wrong, then saying so won't persuade him or her. OTOH, the flip side "Thanks, you were right, and I appreciate your pointing it out" (even with teeth gritted) is an improvement on the human condition.
Now, changing the subject--great first sentences in books.
The English language--so vast, so sprawling, so wonderfully unwieldy, so subtle, and now in its never-ending fullness so undeniably magnificent--is in its essence a language of invasion.
That's the opening sentence of the body (there's an overwritten prologue) of Simon Winchester's book about the composition of the OED. I may be alone, but I think that's a great opening sentence. There are, famously, others:
-----
Call me Ishamael.
It was the best of times.
There was a screaming across the sky.
Stately, plump Buck Mulligan....
----
Do you have favorites?
18221. wonkers2 - 1/15/2006 3:34:37 AM Here's a couple:
"He was an inch, perhaps two, under six feet, powerfully built, and he advanced straight at you with a slight stoop of the shoulders, head forward, and a fixed from-under stare which made you think of a charging bull."
"The world is what it is; men who are nothing, who allow themselves to become nothing, have no place in it." 18222. wonkers2 - 1/15/2006 3:46:07 AM "At five in the afternoon.
It was exactly five in the afternoon.
A boy brought the white sheet
at five in the afternoon.
A frail of lime ready prepared
at five in the afternoon.
The rest was death, and death alone
at five in the afternoon."
(First stanza of one of my favorite poems.) 18223. wonkers2 - 1/15/2006 4:04:28 AM "NOBODY COULD SLEEP. WHEN MORNING CAME, assault craft would be lowered and a first wave of troops would ride through the surf and charge ashore on the beach at Anopopei. All over the ship, all through the convoy, there was a knowledge that in a few hours some of them were going to be dead."
First paragraph.
"The Naked and the Dead"
Norman Mailer 18224. judithathome - 1/15/2006 5:36:08 AM "Who is John Galt?" 18225. wonkers2 - 1/15/2006 5:44:20 AM Here's one everybody can guess:
"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I dont feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth." 18226. wonkers2 - 1/15/2006 5:49:41 AM Where is John Galt? 18227. judithathome - 1/15/2006 6:21:25 AM Thanks, Wonkers...where, indeed? 18228. Magoseph - 1/15/2006 10:29:37 AM Jay,
IT is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife. 18229. wonkers2 - 1/15/2006 3:28:33 PM I wish John Galt had died with Ayn Rand. Unfortunately he's replicated and alive and well in our capital. 18230. jayackroyd - 1/15/2006 5:20:32 PM Mags--I posted the same item on TPMCafe--and someone popped up with that. And--I was corrected. Pynchon is better than my memory:
A screaming comes across the sky.
is correct.
Wonk, is that Eggers? 18231. wonkers2 - 1/15/2006 5:40:46 PM Jay,
18221--opening line in Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim" and the opening line in V.S. Naipaul's "Bend in the River."
18225--opening line in J.D. Salinger's "A Catcher in the Rye." 18234. Magoseph - 1/15/2006 11:27:59 PM Hey, Cap'n, your friend Kira went to Sex $ Genders. 18235. Magoseph - 1/15/2006 11:29:26 PM I posted the same item on TPMCafe.
Where, Jay? I looked for it, but no luck so far. By the way, I can't understand that forum any more. I will have to take some time to study it.
I just finished re-reading Pride and Prejudice, so that one was easy. 18236. Magoseph - 1/15/2006 11:33:41 PM I think that I'm really losing it today--Sex $ Genders? I guess being a nurse, a chauffeur, and a shopper is just too much for little me. 18237. concerned - 1/16/2006 2:57:36 AM Upon reflection, I don't know if it's *never* appropriate to use the phrase 'I told you so'. But I wouldn't think it's appropriate in situations of any gravity, except perhaps in cases where one partner made a particularly glaring mistake.
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