Happy Tuesday, reading friends. It’s time for Top Ten Tuesday, thanks to That Artsy Reader Girl. This week’s prompt was Favourite Book Quotes.
One of my favourite features of Kindle reading is the ability to highlight my favourite quotes, so my problem this week wasn’t so much finding quotes as it was narrowing down my selection! There are all kinds of reasons why a sentence or a paragraph might grab my attention, but one of my favourite literary devices is metaphor. I love the way it enables you to convey so much more than a literal description might, and often in far fewer words.
So here are ten favourites.
Metaphors be with you! 😉
How quickly the gentle embrace of summer had been replaced by the bony arms of winter.
My Dearest Dietrich
Amanda Barratt
He perceived that there was something else in the world besides the speculations of the Sorbonne, and the verses of Homer; that man needed affections; that life without tenderness and without love was only a set of dry, shrieking, and rending wheels.
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
Victor Hugo
“I have the merest embers of pride left, Miss Speedwell. I beg you to let me warm myself upon them.”
A Curious Beginning
Deanna Raybourn
The cakes and pies and casseroles beckoned like gastronomic sirens, and there was no one to lash me to the mast.
The Promise of Jesse Woods
Chris Fabry
“I know what that does to a man, to walk the earth with the burden of sin on his back. It poisons all he touches.”
A Flight of Arrows
Lori Benton
Marcus followed, but his ravenous strides had lost their appetite.
Seek and Hide
Amanda G. Stevens
Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers, that would never have bound you, but for the formation of the first link on one memorable day.
Great Expectations
Charles Dickens
Her smile was now hanging by its teeth and eyebrows and wondering what it would hit when it dropped.
The Big Sleep
Raymond Chandler
His charm was transparent enough, but the veil of love could do wonders to even the most reprehensible character.
Murder at the Brightwell
Ashley Weaver
“He is the first specimen of a manufacturer—of a person engaged in trade—that I had ever the opportunity of studying, papa. He is my first olive: let me make a face while I swallow it. I know he is a good of his kind, and by and by I shall like the kind.”
North and South
Elizabeth Gaskell
And now I’m craving cakes, pies, and casseroles. 🙂
My post .
I’d never heard of “The Promise of Jesse Woods” but the cover and that quote are definitely pulling me in!
I love North and South! Here is my Top Ten Tuesday.
Oh, these are perfect. I keep meaning to get around to reading more of Raymond Chandler’s work, and his quote here reminds me why. What a remarkably surprising writer.