Top Ten Tuesday is currently hosted by artsyreadergirl and has weekly topics for bloggers to respond to and share. Click the link for more info and to read more submitted posts!
This week’s prompt was for things that book characters have said. I don’t have any suitable quotes saved that were specifically dialogue (except for one) so all of these are quotes from characters in first person perspective, which is probably my favourite narrative style. They’re said to the reader, in one way or another.
No common theme, you’re in for a bit of a rollercoaster ride of tone! 🤣
Pamela on The Defendant (aka Ted Bundy) in Bright Young Women by Jessica Knoll
Sometimes I think The Defendant is just another old wives’ tale. That law enforcement backed up his self-purported claims of brilliance to cover up their own incompetence—in interviews they gave the media, in testimonies they made before the judge—and it all cemented from there, hardening into a generational truth passed down from mother to daughter. Consider this my own warning: The man was no diabolical genius. He was your run-of-the-mill incel whom I caught picking his nose in the courtroom. More than once.
I thought this book did a great job dismantling the Bundy myth and I think about this passage often.
Eleanor on loneliness in Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman
These days, loneliness is the new cancer – a shameful, embarrassing thing, brought upon yourself in some obscure way. A fearful, incurable thing, so horrifying that you dare not mention it; other people don’t want to hear the word spoken aloud for fear that they might too be afflicted, or that it might tempt fate into visiting a similar horror upon them.
I really related to Eleanor’s isolated life when I read this book. There were a lot of passages that resonated, including this one.
Captain Wentworth’s letter to Anne in Persuasion by Jane Austen
I can listen no longer in silence. I must speak to you by such means as are within my reach. You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever. I offer myself to you again with a heart even more your own than when you almost broke it, eight years and a half ago.
Has there ever more romantic letter in literature?
Miranda on living with chronic pain in All’s Well by Mona Awad
Maybe she is one of the Nerve Women. Women of the invisible pain. Women alight with blinking red webs. No spider in sight. But the web is there.
I thought this book was such a raw exploration of invisible, chronic pain. I think about The Nerve Women a lot, especially the experience of one of my good friends who suffers with rheumatoid arthritis.
Scarlett Witch erases mutantkind in House of M (#7) by Brian Michael Bendis
No more mutants
Three worlds born of so much grief and pain, with devastating universe alerting effects! I get chills every time I read this!
Adrian Mole on teenage hormones in The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, Aged 13 3/4 by Sue Townsend
I was racked with sexuality but it wore off when I helped my father put manure on our rose bed.
I could do an entire post of Adrian Mole quotes but the phrase “racked with sexuality” lives in my brain!
Georgia Nicolson on love in
It’s OK, I’m Wearing Really Big Knickers! by Louise Rennison
“I could have quite literally snogged until the cows came home. And when they came home I would have shouted, “WHAT HAVE YOU COWS COME HOME FOR? CAN’T YOU SEE I’M SNOGGING, YOU STUPID HERBIVORES???”
Georgia is the Adrian Mole of my generation, and I could probably write 50 favourite quotes! I think about this whenever somebody uses this phrase!
Alan Partridge on tea etiquette in I, Partridge by Alan Partridge
Putting a damp spoon back in the bowl is the tea-drinking equivalent of sharing a needle. And I did not want to end up with the tea-drinking equivalent of AIDS.
Alan is another infinite source of gems! It was hard to pick one.
Dorothy Daniels on losing her virginity to a random fast food employee in A Certain Hunger by Chelsea G. Summers
He stuck me. I yowled, then I luxuriated in the unfamiliar pain, a sensation that thrilled and frightened me. A miasma of beef tallow, dirty corn oil, and unwashed man surrounded us. To this day, I can’t look at a Burger King cheeseburger wrapper without feeling my clit twitch. Such is the power of that particular madeleine. I wish I knew that guy’s name. I’d like to look him up.
I loved Dorothy’s over the top prose. This particular passage has lived in my brain!
Samantha on wanting to know WTF is happing in Bunny by Mona Awad
I would in fact need to live inside Victoria’s spoiled, fragmented, lazy, pretentious little mind to get it. And who apart from us, apart from me, is going to be willing to do that? To work all night with a Victoria Decoder? Who would even care to? And then I feel like screaming JUST SAY IT. TELL ME WHAT HAPPENED. TELL ME WHAT THE FUCK THIS MEANS AND WHAT YOU DID WITH HIM EXACTLY.
I loved this little outburst from Samantha, I feels like a wink to the readers experience in her POV!
Next weeks is a topic I suggested, which you’d think I’d be prepared for… but you’d be wrong! I’m hoping not to do another 9pm scramble to post though!
I love Persuasion! And Adrian Mole, so funny. Love that Alan Patridge has made his way into the list as well. Great quotes!
I’ve been rereading the Alan books so he’s right at the front of my brain at the moment 😂 this list made me realise I need to reread Adrian Mole!
I like that quote about living with chronic pain.