YOUYOU - Celebration of Phrase
Jan. 11th, 2008 02:42 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
guppiecatI was thinking about memes and how the term has been watered down from being an idea/concept that spreads through a culture and turned into a personal disclosure that spreads through social networks. (We used to call these "fads", but hey, things change.) It seems that the the term "meme" is being used more as "me! me!". Thus, today I introduce a youyou. (Not to confused with the toy (or owl) yo-yo... or the new personal pronoun (pluralized through repetition))
But I digress.
The point here is that there is considerable discussion and sharing of good quotes from movies and television programs. Every year, we seem to get inundated with "the best movies of [past year]", "the top [number] movies/shows of [year range]" etc etc etc. It makes one wonder where all the books went. Thus, I present this:
YOUYOU: In no less than a sentence and no more than two paragraphs, share brilliant turns of phrase and/or insights from writings of Speculative Fiction. (Fantasy, Science Fiction, Mythic Fiction, etc are all also acceptable.) These should be passages that moved you, either intellectually or emotionally... the words that resonated as you read the story and stuck in your brain for days after. They should NOT spoil the story. To start, I will share a few with you all, and if you all share with me, we'll have a nice youyou going on.
Spider venom comes in many forms. It can often take a long while to discover the full effects of the bite. Naturalists have pondered this for years: there are spiders whose bite can cause the place bitten to rot and die, sometimes more than a year after it was bitten. As to why spiders do this, the answer is simple. It's because spiders think this is funny, and they don't want you to ever forget them.
--Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
"It's like the slates from Scry Pass, the ones I showed you in the collection. You could see it in the striae and the marks, even if none of the bloody curators did. Varmin Way wasn't just passing through, it was resting, it was recovering, it had been attacked. I am right.
-- China Mieville, "Reports of Certain Events in London" from Looking for Jake
And the new dance said, This is what it is to be human: to see the essential existential futility of all action, all striving -- and to act, to strive. This is what it is to be human: to reach forever beyond your grasp. This is what it is to be human: to live forever to die trying. This is what it is to be human: to perpetually ask the unanswerable questions, in the hope that the asking of them will somehow hasten the day when they will be answered. This is what it is to be human: to strive in the face of the certainty of failure.
This is what it is to be human: to persist.
-- Spider Robinson, "Stardance" (and Stardance)
I fished the lug nuts out of the hubcap and spun them on. I usually like to put a little oil on them, but this time I let it go. I reached under the car and let the jack down and pulled it out. I was relieved to see that the spare was high enough to drive on. I put the jack and the lug wrench and the flat into the trunk. Instead of replacing the hubcap, I put it in there too. All this time, the bears never made a move. They just held the torches, whether out of curiosity of helpfulness, there was no way of knowing. It looked like there may have been more bears behind them, in the trees.
Opening three doors at once, we got into the car and drove off. Wallace was the first to speak. "Looks like bears have discovered fire," he said.
--Terry Bisson, "Bears Discover Fire" from Bears Discover Fire
Having the Toobychubby theme song play in my head at all hours of the night and day seemed like a small price to pay for model children. I did notice that most of the mothers I bumped into at the supermarket or in the toy store or at the video rental store were, well, humming. We caught ourselves singing along with each other.
Then the whispers started.
-- Nina Kirki Hoffman, "Toobychubbies" from Time Travelers, Ghosts, and Other Visitors
(I wanted to share from Ursula K LeGuin's "White Donkey" (from The Compass Rose) and from Nina Kiriki Hoffman's "Coming Home" (from the hard-to-find "Author's Choice Monthly Issue 14), but to do so would spoil the stories. They're still very much worth reading.)
But I digress.
The point here is that there is considerable discussion and sharing of good quotes from movies and television programs. Every year, we seem to get inundated with "the best movies of [past year]", "the top [number] movies/shows of [year range]" etc etc etc. It makes one wonder where all the books went. Thus, I present this:
YOUYOU: In no less than a sentence and no more than two paragraphs, share brilliant turns of phrase and/or insights from writings of Speculative Fiction. (Fantasy, Science Fiction, Mythic Fiction, etc are all also acceptable.) These should be passages that moved you, either intellectually or emotionally... the words that resonated as you read the story and stuck in your brain for days after. They should NOT spoil the story. To start, I will share a few with you all, and if you all share with me, we'll have a nice youyou going on.
Spider venom comes in many forms. It can often take a long while to discover the full effects of the bite. Naturalists have pondered this for years: there are spiders whose bite can cause the place bitten to rot and die, sometimes more than a year after it was bitten. As to why spiders do this, the answer is simple. It's because spiders think this is funny, and they don't want you to ever forget them.
--Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
"It's like the slates from Scry Pass, the ones I showed you in the collection. You could see it in the striae and the marks, even if none of the bloody curators did. Varmin Way wasn't just passing through, it was resting, it was recovering, it had been attacked. I am right.
-- China Mieville, "Reports of Certain Events in London" from Looking for Jake
And the new dance said, This is what it is to be human: to see the essential existential futility of all action, all striving -- and to act, to strive. This is what it is to be human: to reach forever beyond your grasp. This is what it is to be human: to live forever to die trying. This is what it is to be human: to perpetually ask the unanswerable questions, in the hope that the asking of them will somehow hasten the day when they will be answered. This is what it is to be human: to strive in the face of the certainty of failure.
This is what it is to be human: to persist.
-- Spider Robinson, "Stardance" (and Stardance)
I fished the lug nuts out of the hubcap and spun them on. I usually like to put a little oil on them, but this time I let it go. I reached under the car and let the jack down and pulled it out. I was relieved to see that the spare was high enough to drive on. I put the jack and the lug wrench and the flat into the trunk. Instead of replacing the hubcap, I put it in there too. All this time, the bears never made a move. They just held the torches, whether out of curiosity of helpfulness, there was no way of knowing. It looked like there may have been more bears behind them, in the trees.
Opening three doors at once, we got into the car and drove off. Wallace was the first to speak. "Looks like bears have discovered fire," he said.
--Terry Bisson, "Bears Discover Fire" from Bears Discover Fire
Having the Toobychubby theme song play in my head at all hours of the night and day seemed like a small price to pay for model children. I did notice that most of the mothers I bumped into at the supermarket or in the toy store or at the video rental store were, well, humming. We caught ourselves singing along with each other.
Then the whispers started.
-- Nina Kirki Hoffman, "Toobychubbies" from Time Travelers, Ghosts, and Other Visitors
(I wanted to share from Ursula K LeGuin's "White Donkey" (from The Compass Rose) and from Nina Kiriki Hoffman's "Coming Home" (from the hard-to-find "Author's Choice Monthly Issue 14), but to do so would spoil the stories. They're still very much worth reading.)
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-11 11:32 pm (UTC)You don't trust people because they're a sure bet or even a good risk. You trust them because the risk that you'll lose them is worse than the risk that they'll hurt you.
--Chris Moriarty, Spin State