2025, books, Fantasy, Mysteries

What She Said…

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At a funeral in September, the father of my deceased friend came over to talk to the rest of us from her book club.  He was proud of how intelligent she had been and how much she had loved reading.  He surprised us by asking us each if we had a favorite book and what character would we like to be in that book.  At the time I answered A Christmas Carol, which I read every December and that I would like to be Mrs. Cratchit.  She was considered a good person but wasn’t a doormat.  This is my favorite quote from her “I wish I had him here.  I’d give him a piece of my mind to feast upon, and I hope he’d have a good appetite for it.”

But I’ve had a couple of months and I have a couple more.  I always admired Helen Burns, the little friend of Jane Eyre who dies from mistreatment at the “school”.  “It is not violence that best overcomes hate – nor vengeance that most certainly heals injury.”  Good words for our current times.

While The Martian is one of my favorite books of all time, I wouldn’t want to be Mark (the main character).  A little too distressing for me.  I want to be Melissa Lewis, the captain of the mission, who turns around when they’re almost back to Earth when they find out that Mark is still alive.  “All right team, stay in sight of each other.  Let’s make NASA proud today..”   Even though I’m sure she got court-martialed when they all got back home, even after saving Mark. 

I’m not sure which character in Wrinkle in Time I would want to be but my favorite quote is early on in the book when Meg’s mother says “But you see, Meg, just because we don’t understand doesn’t mean that the explanation doesn’t exist.”  My hero Neil deGrasse Tyson has said something very similar.

Do you have a character you’d like to be?  Or a good quote from a book you like?

49 thoughts on “What She Said…”

  1. way back when wayne dyer came out with your erroneous zones and i loved the opening line in credits which turned out to be from the declaration of independance
    experience has shown that mankind will suffer evils while evils are sufferable rather than to right himself by abolishing the means to which he has become accustomed.
    just a quote ive carried around for 50 years. the character is the founding fathers

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      1. I wonder if it started for people who were having a hard time finding time to read… from too many social engagements, so created a social event where reading could happen? (she said from experience)

        It sounds like they do have some discussion after an hour of reading…

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      2. What’s the point of getting together if you’re not going to discuss the book? (I can read just fine, silently, alone at home.)

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        1. Or if you can’t read at home, owing to interruption or some other impediment, how is it different to just go to a coffee shop and read, without calling it a “club”?

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  8. In Bill Holm’s Coming Home Crazy, published in 2000, he quotes Walt Whitman at the end of a chapter entitled “Papers, Please”:
    To the States or any one of them
    or any city of the States
    Resist much, obey little.
    Once unqquestioning obedience, once fully enslaved,
    Once fully enslaved, no nation, state, city of this earth,
    ever afterward resumes its liberty.

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    2. In response to the other part of today’s prompt, I can’t conceive of wanting to be someone else. I’ve never had idols and I’ve never imagined myself another person, real or fictional, living or dead. I can admire, I can empathize but I don’t want to be anyone but myself.

      I would be a crap actor.

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  9. One of my favorite literary characters is Jack Reacher. I live vicariously through him because I see myself as having some of his loner/wanderer spirit. I certainly wouldn’t want to get into the messes he gets himself into. I’d be worthless in any sort of a fight.

    But the idea that he always sides with the underdogs or good guys and helps them prevail is appealing to my charitable nature. Although I wish I could help more people in more ways. But … you can’t save the world, only little tiny parts of it if you’re lucky.

    Other favorites have been Horatio Hornblower, Johnny Tremain (except for the mangled hand), and Jim Hawkins (Treasure Island). Incredibly memorable, admirable characters for a precocious young reader.

    I tend to forget memorable quotes from books, or anything . . . other than something like “Show me the money!” from “Jerry McGuire.”

    Chris in Owatonna

    PS: Shoutout to Krista for stopping by the Northfield Middle School on Saturday for the Riverwalk Marketfair winter market. Always a pleasure to say hi to a TBer.

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      1. I’m almost afraid to mention it, lest I jinx my current good fortune, but I have had NO TROUBLE at all with WP since that fateful day about three or four weeks ago when I was asked to Subscribe. I can “Like” to my heart’s content, though I’ve become so accustomed to not trying because of the futility of it, that I often forget.

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    1. I might be overthinking this, but wouldn’t a married woman have to exert even more effort to attain solitude than a single one? Especially if she has children.

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      1. It’s not an effort toward solitude. It’s an effort (sometimes) to live and enjoy a very solitary life. I like it just fine for about 360 days of the year, but holidays really suck.

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        1. Oh Krista, I’m sorry to hear that you struggle with holidays. Time to create some meaningful traditions of your own so you don’t feel like a charity case at someone else’s celebrations.

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  13. I have been an old man today. Failing vision. Failing hearing and balance. And failing memory in a big way. If this doesn’t say Clyde, then I forget who I am.

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    1. I can assure you, Clyde, that if you dwell on the ever increasing list of physical and mental failings as you grow older, you will be miserable the rest of your life. You have gained perspective, and hopefully some wisdom as you have aged; use them to navigate the last chapter of your life with as much grace and joy as you can muster. That’s my daily goal for myself.

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    2. I have an odd memory issue, which I have for at least 40 years. I can read a six digit number and carry it in my head for an hour or two. But the things I use all the time from memory, such as a password, will fail me.

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  14. Luckily, I have an online file where I sometimes save quotes, so here are a couple:

    Faith Sullivan, from Good Night, Mr. Wodehouse
    “Death was a great mystery. A current was turned off. Where did that vanished power go? Was it there, vibrating in the air around her like a musical instrument whose note is no longer audible but whose strings still hum soundlessly?”

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  15. I’m cheating, because I haven’t read much of this book, but love this quote:
    “It is very important to go out alone, to sit under a tree—not with a book, not with a companion, but by yourself—and observe the falling of a leaf, hear the lapping of the water, the fishermen’s song, watch the flight of a bird, and of your own thoughts as they chase each other across the space of your mind. If you are able to be alone and watch these things, then you will discover extraordinary riches which no government can tax, no human agency can corrupt, and which can never be destroyed.”

    ~Jiddu Krishnamurti, The Krishnamurti Reader

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  16. Krista reminded me of a quote from Louise Erdrich, for which I had to look online and realized it’s not a quote, but a poem. I love it so will post it here anyway…

    “Leave the dishes.
    Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator
    and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.
    Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.
    Throw the cracked bowl out and don’t patch the cup.
    Don’t patch anything. Don’t mend. Buy safety pins.
    Don’t even sew on a button.
    Let the wind have its way, then the earth
    that invades as dust and then the dead
    foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.
    Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.
    Don’t keep all the pieces of the puzzles
    or the doll’s tiny shoes in pairs, don’t worry
    who uses whose toothbrush or if anything
    matches, at all.
    Except one word to another. Or a thought.
    Pursue the authentic-decide first
    what is authentic,
    then go after it with all your heart.
    Your heart, that place
    you don’t even think of cleaning out.
    That closet stuffed with savage mementos.
    Don’t sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth
    or worry if we’re all eating cereal for dinner
    again. Don’t answer the telephone, ever,
    or weep over anything at all that breaks.
    Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons
    in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life
    and talk to the dead
    who drift in through the screened windows, who collect
    patiently on the tops of food jars and books.
    Recycle the mail, don’t read it, don’t read anything
    except what destroys
    the insulation between yourself and your experience
    or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters
    this ruse you call necessity.”

    “Advice to Myself” by Louise Erdrich from Original Fire. © Harper Collins Publishers, 2003.

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    1. Oh my god, that doesn’t appeal to me at all. Gross! And trust me when I tell you, I’m not fastidious. That sounds to me like the roommate from hell.

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  17. I have read many, many works of fiction and identified with many characters but somewhere past the age of about 13 I never met a character I wanted to be. No character is ever complete, lives are never that simple no matter how rounded a character is.
    Of all the elements of fiction, I find character the most interesting. The rhetoric of character development is the best part, what the author tells as opposed to what the author leaves for you to discover for one thing. I like authors who never tell you anything, but leave it for you to decide everything on your own. The unreliable narrators of the second half of the 20th century can be fun or infuriating. (Do I contradict myself? Then I contradict myself. For I am a multitude.) or something like that. Is that Whitman? So many could have said that.

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  18. Favorite quote? Almost anything from Pride and Prejudice. Or The Importance of Being Earnest (do plays count?)

    The last paragraph of Song of Achilles appeals to my inner diehard romantic: “In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”

    “All children, except one, grow up.” I always wanted to be Wendy Darling and learn to fly. Walking the plank, not so much. Now that I’m older I’d rather be Peter Pan.

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    1. I hope plays count because Shakespeare is quoted constantly and I love it.

      Me thinks thou doest protest too much.
      First thing we do is kill all the lawyers
      To be or not to be
      Heart of gold

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  19. Favorite quote? Almost anything from Pride and Prejudice. Or The Importance of Being Earnest (do plays count?)

    The last paragraph of Song of Achilles appeals to my inner diehard romantic: “In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”

    “All children, except one, grow up.” I always wanted to be Wendy Darling and learn to fly. Walking the plank, not so much. Now that I’m older I’d rather be Peter Pan.

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  20. I always loved Franny Glass in the D=J. D. Salinger stories. “I’m just sick of ego, ego, ego. My own and everybody else’s. I’m sick of everybody that wants to get somewhere, do something distinguished and all, be somebody interesting. It’s disgusting— it is, it is. I don’t care what anybody says… I’m not afraid to compete. It‘a just the opposite. Don’t you see that? I’m afraid I will compete—that’s what scares me. Just because I’m so horribly conditioned to accept everybody else’s values, and just because I like applause and people to rave about me, doesn’t make it right. I’m ashamed of it. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody. I’m sick of myself and everybody else that wants to make some kind of splash.”

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  21. The only fictional character I can recall actually wanting to be was Pippi Longstocking, and this was back when I was nine or ten years old. She was strong and smart and free from parental tyranny – keep in mind I was at the mercy of an abusive mother. She also had a horse that she could carry up onto the porch of her house, and she knew enough about an impending solar eclipse to use it as a way to impress her friends.

    At that age, I used books a lot as way of escaping my own painful reality, but Pippi was the only one I wanted to be. Other characters inspired me to pay attention to details, read, and learn stuff, but it was Pippi’s independence and lack of parental (adult) interference in her life that was so appealing to me.

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    1. Yes! That is a lot of the appeal of many children’s books. My Side of the Mountain was another that I loved, and <Island of the Blue Dolphins. Books that featured children who were free of parental controls were fascinating.

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