Listed here are favorite quotes from The Third Man. Quotes that inspire, or give a strong visual image, or just admiration of the author's words ... poetic, lyrical, straightforward, cultural, etc ...
So back they drove, through the heart of a forest where the graves lay like wolves under the trees, winking white eyes under the gloom of the evergreens.
Within a minute he had left Vienna behind and was walking through a dense wood, ankle deep in snow. An owl hooted, and he felt suddenly lonely and scared. He had an appointment to meet Harry under a particular tree, but in a wood so dense as this how would he recognize any one tree from the rest? The he saw a figure and ran towards it: it whistled a familiar tune and his heart lifted with the relief and joy of not after all being alone. The the figure turned and it was not Harry at all - just a stranger who grinned at him in a little circle, while the owl hooted again and again.
The dark was almost down; the snow had ceased for awhile to fall, and the great statues of the Ring, the prancing horses, the chariots, and the eagles, were gunshot grey with the end of evening light ... The moony snow lay ankle deep on the unswept pavements.
- but there are to many "ifs" in my style of writing, for it is my profession to balance possibilities, human possibilities, and the drive of destiny can never find a place in my files.
The Englishman who objects to Americans in general usually carries in his mind's eye just such an exception as Cooler: a man with tousled grey hair and a worried kindly face and long-sighted eyes, the kind of humanitarian who turns up in a typhus epidemic or a world war or a Chinese famine long before his countrymen have discovered the place in an atlas.
"I'd make comic faces all day long. I'd stand on my head and grin at you between my legs. I'd learn lots of jokes from the book on after-dinner speaking."
A thaw set in that night, and all over Vienna the snow melted, and the ugly ruins came to light again: steel rods hanging like stalactites, and rusty girders thrusting like bones through the grey slush.
You novelists live out of the world
ReplyDeleteSo back they drove, through the heart of a forest where the graves lay like wolves under the trees, winking white eyes under the gloom of the evergreens.
ReplyDeleteWithin a minute he had left Vienna behind and was walking through a dense wood, ankle deep in snow. An owl hooted, and he felt suddenly lonely and scared. He had an appointment to meet Harry under a particular tree, but in a wood so dense as this how would he recognize any one tree from the rest? The he saw a figure and ran towards it: it whistled a familiar tune and his heart lifted with the relief and joy of not after all being alone. The the figure turned and it was not Harry at all - just a stranger who grinned at him in a little circle, while the owl hooted again and again.
ReplyDeleteThere MUST be something phoney about a man who won't accept baldness gracefully.
ReplyDeleteThe hands of the guilty don't necessarily tremble; only in stories does a dropped glass betray agitation.
ReplyDeleteThe dark was almost down; the snow had ceased for awhile to fall, and the great statues of the Ring, the prancing horses, the chariots, and the eagles, were gunshot grey with the end of evening light ... The moony snow lay ankle deep on the unswept pavements.
ReplyDelete... I could invent a better detective than you in my bath.
ReplyDelete- but there are to many "ifs" in my style of writing, for it is my profession to balance possibilities, human possibilities, and the drive of destiny can never find a place in my files.
ReplyDeleteThe Englishman who objects to Americans in general usually carries in his mind's eye just such an exception as Cooler: a man with tousled grey hair and a worried kindly face and long-sighted eyes, the kind of humanitarian who turns up in a typhus epidemic or a world war or a Chinese famine long before his countrymen have discovered the place in an atlas.
ReplyDeleteNot the sort of thing I could confess to a stranger, I suppose, but you have to break the rules sometimes. Humanity's a duty too.
ReplyDeletefor lovers talk and reconstruct the smallest details if they can find a listener
ReplyDeleteThe group of people up the road was like a splash of ink on the whiteness that flowed, changed shape, spread out.
ReplyDeleteHuman nature too has curious twisted reasons that the heart certainly knows nothing of.
ReplyDeleteA racket works very like a totalitarian party.
ReplyDeleteHe was in the mood for violence, and the snowy road heaved like a lake and set his mind on a new course towards sorrow, eternal love, renunciation.
ReplyDelete"I'd make comic faces all day long. I'd stand on my head and grin at you between my legs. I'd learn lots of jokes from the book on after-dinner speaking."
ReplyDeleteA thaw set in that night, and all over Vienna the snow melted, and the ugly ruins came to light again: steel rods hanging like stalactites, and rusty girders thrusting like bones through the grey slush.
ReplyDelete