Favorite descriptions

Jason

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Whether cliche or otherwise, some turns of phrases seem to stick with you longer than others.

Share your own favorites, or those of authors you've read here. For instance:

The Dragonbone Chair, Tad Williams:
"...the sighing grass from the winds..."
"...The sun had dropped until there was nothing left but a bright residue along the crest of the hill..."

I have more, of course, but that's just a few examples from something recent.

What are are some memorable lines from your past reading and writing? (Don't forget to give credit if it's someone else's work... :) )
 

Springs

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I was a fan of "Sorcery is a sauce fools spoon over failure to hide the flavor of their own incompetence," from George R.R. Martin (I think it was in Clash of Kings). Less a physical description and more one of human nature in that realm, but still.
 

Phantasmagoria

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"The women laugh at something one of them has said, and the sound wafts up to the man on a passing breeze. He closes his eyes and savors the faint tremolo of their voices, the fainter reverberation of their footsteps like the wingbeats of butterflies against his sessapinae. He can’t sess all seven million residents of the city, mind you; he’s good, but not that good. Most of them, though, yes, they are there. Here. He breathes deeply and becomes a fixture of the earth. They tread upon the filaments of his nerves; their voices stir the fine hairs of his skin; their breaths ripple the air he draws into his lungs. They are on him. They are in him.

But he knows that he is not, and will never be, one of them."

from N.K. Jemisin's The Fifth Season (I cannot recommend her enough; if you like fantasy you *must* read her stuff)
 

Jason

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Oh man, just read this and had to add it, again from The Dragonbone Chair:

"...Honor is a wonderful thing, but it is a means, not an end. A man who starves with honor does not help his family, a king who falls on his sword with honor does not save his kingdom."

Ok, not only is that good writing, but that is a deeply provocative and insightful observation.
 

Simpson17866

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Peter Watts, Blindsight

The most powerful segment of the novel – and that is not a short list: the captain's paranoia that the narrator was out to get him, the narrator's blunt admission that he's in the crew as a Redshirt, the fact that vampire's vulnerabilities to crosses and people's homes could come from the same place biologically – would have to be the narrator's realization of why the aliens were invading:

"Imagine you're a Scrambler..."

I'd gone into the story knowing the general points of how Watts developed his aliens' psychology, but this analysis of the specific consequences terrified me in the most Lovecraftian way imaginable.
 

Jerboa

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I can't be bothered to type it all out, but I love the descriptions of Croup and Vandemar in Neil Gaiman's Neverwhere. The punchline made me LOL.
 

Jason

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The sky was black as pitch, salted with stars...

The Dragonbone Chair, Tad Williams :)
 

Jason

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"Elsewhere the ice cliffs had cracked and fallen, in crystalline chunks, gemlike raw edges etched in stormy blue, crumbling into tesselate confusion like the abandoned blocks of some giant architect."

The Dragonbone Chair- Tad Williams

Not only do I wish I could write like this, I wish I had that kind of command over language. (Had to look up tessellate).
 

Jason

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Sorry for bumping this semi-dated thread, but felt this line worthy:

”The light of the torches went before them, and their shadows marched beside them on the walls.”

A Storm of Swords, George R. R. Martin
 

llawrence

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Your lips were drawn back like a cat’s, your teeth flashing in the light. Your whole face was taught with fury. Your scream was wordless and dark, sharp as a knife.

You moved so fast, they could not stop you. A rush of red, yes—the color of your robes. Flickering golden ornaments in your hair. Dragons, or phoenixes, it matters not. Snarling, you wrapped your hands around my throat.

—From The Tiger's Daughter, by K Arsenault Rivera.
 

Azdaphel

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Oh man, just read this and had to add it, again from The Dragonbone Chair:

"...Honor is a wonderful thing, but it is a means, not an end. A man who starves with honor does not help his family, a king who falls on his sword with honor does not save his kingdom."

Ok, not only is that good writing, but that is a deeply provocative and insightful observation.

There is something similar in The Fifth Element, a phrase from an antagonist I really like. I only know the French version though (will surely repair this mistake in the future):
"L'honneur a fait des millions de morts mais n'a jamais sauvé personne"

Also, in the same vibe from Mass Effect, a quote from the character Javik:
“Stand amongst the ashes of a trillion dead souls, and ask the ghosts if honor matters. The silence is your answer.”
 

Jason

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Translation: Honor has done millions of deaths but has never saved anyone
 

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“Morte prima di disonore” -- Tacitus
“Death Before Dishonor” in English
 

blacbird

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H.G. Wells was brilliant at narrative description that could evoke a sense of strangeness and wonder and remains highly readable today. The Time Machine contains a great deal of such material.

C.S. Lewis also was good at this, best demonstrated in his space trilogy, starting with Out of the Silent Planet.

And Ray Bradbury was a genius at it in many many stories. This, from his brief prologue to The October Country.

. . . that country where it is always turning late in the year. That country where the hills are fog and the rivers are mist; where noons go quickly, dusk and twilight linger, and midnights stay. That country composed in the main of cellars, sub-cellars, coal-bins, closets, attics and pantries faced away from the sun. That country whose people are autumn people, thinking only autumn thoughts. Whose people passing at night on the empty walks sound like rain . . .


More recently, Stephen King, in his Dark Tower series, demonstrated this ability well.

caw
 
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Northborn Swordsman

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Extraction from a monologue in which one of my characters describes a three-day battle in the shadow of erupting volcanoes.
"Every acre burned that week. The fires consumed, the only real things left in the world. You only knew where you were from their shape, that angry glow on the grey everything around you. If insects warred in the clothes of a man at the stake... yes, I think they might've seen the same, waiting their turn to burn. "
 
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Harlequin

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I was thinking about this today. This is from Etched City but all her stuff is lovely:

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