Your all-time, number-one favourite piece of prose...

Hetzer · Super Spammer Joined: 19 Feb 2007 Karma :

I first read this back in 1990, and it's yet to be surpassed for me:

"
...where there was nature and earth, life and water, I saw a desert landscape that was unending, resembling some sort of crater, so devoid of reason and light and spirit that the mind could not grasp it on any sort of conscious level and if you came close the mind would reel backward, unable to take it in. It was a vision so clear and real and vital to me that in its purity it was almost abstract. This was what I could understand, this was how I lived my life, what I constructed my movement around, how I dealt with the tangible. This was the geography around which my reality revolved: it did not occur to me, ever, that people were good or that a man was capable of change or that the world could be a better place through one's taking pleasure in a feeling or a look or a gesture, of receiving another person's love or kindness. Nothing was affirmative, the term "generosity of spirit" applied to nothing, was a cliché, was some kind of bad joke. Sex is mathematics. Individuality no longer an issue. What does intelligence signify? Define reason. Desire -- meaningless. Intellect is not a cure. Justice is dead. Fear, recrimination, innocence, sympathy, guilt, waste, failure, grief, were things, emotions, that no one really felt anymore. Reflection is useless, the world is senseless. Evil is its only permanence. God is not alive. Love cannot be trusted. Surface, surface, surface was all that anyone found meaning in... this was civilization as I saw it, colossal and jagged..."

What's yours, and why?
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"There's the horizon! Ride hard, ride fast and cut down all who stand in your way!"

Nai · World Chat Champion Joined: 18 Apr 2010 Karma :

I am not sure if it counts as prose (uncertain of definition) but I always loved the first part of a book I think called Star of the Sea? It was about a murder on a ship carrying Irish folk escaping the potato famine.

The first thing it did was describe the murderer, his appearance and movements, the way he shuffled around the ship, and left it uncertain who he was going to kill. It was the most hooking beginning to a book I have ever read.

Gone · Nearly there... Joined: 01 Sep 2010 Karma :

"It was written that I should remain loyal to the nightmare of my choice"

I've been haunted by those words for so long I can't remember when I first read them. Like everything else in that short but stunning work, these few words leave so much unanswered, yet ring so true.

"It was written" - who by? Does the narrator acknowledge the existence of the author, another layer of an already complex frame tale, or is he referring back to the knitters of black wool, the fates? Whatever, they have meant a lot to me for a long time.

chris-red · Have you considered a TDM? Joined: 21 Sep 2005 Karma :

In the battle of Britain theme, this always sends shivers down my spine.

"Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few"
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Well, you know what they say. If you want to save the world, you have to push a few old ladies down the stairs.
Skudd:- Perhaps she just thinks you are a window licker and is being nice just in case she becomes another Jill Dando.
WANTED:- Fujinon (Fuji) M42 (Screw on) lenses, let me know if you have anything.

dodgydog · World Chat Champion Joined: 10 Sep 2009 Karma :

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies
Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand dare sieze the fire?

And what shoulder, & what art.
Could twist the sinews of thy heart?
And when thy heart began to beat,
What dread hand? & what dread feet?

What the hammer? what the chain?
In what furnace was thy brain?
What the anvil? what dread grasp
Dare its deadly terrors clasp?

When the stars threw down their spears,
And watered heaven with their tears,
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the Lamb make thee?

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Dog
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I know that you believe that you understood what you think I said, but I am not sure you realise that what you heard is not exactly what I meant

dodgydog · World Chat Champion Joined: 10 Sep 2009 Karma :

chris-red · Have you considered a TDM? Joined: 21 Sep 2005 Karma :

Snodvan · Spanner Monkey Joined: 22 Jul 2010 Karma :

The clothes of Heaven - Yeates

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
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04 (UK Reg) BMW F650cs, but really 02 first Reg in Holland

Hazylogic · World Chat Champion Joined: 22 Feb 2009 Karma :

untitled by anon. Circa 12 century.

Thunder, thunder, thundercats, Ho!
Thundercats are on the move,
Thundercats are loose,
Feel the magic, hear the Roar,
Thundercats are loose,

Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats!
Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats!
Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats!
Thunder, thunder, thunder, Thundercats! Thundercats!

chris-red · Have you considered a TDM? Joined: 21 Sep 2005 Karma :

Prose people.

Prose is considered one of the two major literary structures, with the other being verse.[citation needed] Prose lacks the more formal metrical structure of verse that is almost always found in traditional poetry. Poems often involve a meter and/or rhyme scheme. Prose, instead, comprises full, grammatical sentences, which then constitute paragraphs and overlook aesthetic appeal.

Music lyrics are very much verse.
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Well, you know what they say. If you want to save the world, you have to push a few old ladies down the stairs.
Skudd:- Perhaps she just thinks you are a window licker and is being nice just in case she becomes another Jill Dando.
WANTED:- Fujinon (Fuji) M42 (Screw on) lenses, let me know if you have anything.

pinkyfloyd · Super Spammer Joined: 20 Jul 2010 Karma :

Not sure if its prose or not but this always stuck with me

carlosthejack... · World Chat Champion Joined: 16 Aug 2010 Karma :

"We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold..."
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Responsibility. It's a difficult reality for some. I'm running the 2014 Sheffield Half Marathon on behalf of Bluebell Wood Childrens Hospice. Please sponsor me, even if it's just a quid.
DonnyBrago: "I think you may be confusing rain and napalm..." Paulington: "It's not what you ride, it's how you ride it."
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pinkyfloyd · Super Spammer Joined: 20 Jul 2010 Karma :

angryjonny · World Chat Champion Joined: 01 Sep 2006 Karma :

"I know Bono and he knows Ono and she knows Eno's phone goes thus."

FURBAR · Banned Joined: 04 Apr 2010 Karma :

For all the good it does, as of yet, i still remind myself everyday that :

We all choose what to think about ..

Were not what we think we are, were what we do ..

These two lines. not a prose i suppose, have helped me no end ... although i'm yet to adhere to them as much as i would like .. Rolling Eyes

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Fuk um !!

Hetzer · Super Spammer Joined: 19 Feb 2007 Karma :

Hockeystorm65 · Spanner Monkey Joined: 08 Sep 2010 Karma :

".......Then suddenly an unconscious Argentinian fell through my roof.
Followed by a midget dressed as a nun........" Shocked

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Good judgement comes from experience.....experience comes from bad judgement!

Kris · World Chat Champion Joined: 03 Feb 2002 Karma :

"For me, Chile will always be South America's supermodel sister - very beautiful but too long, too skinny, and too expensive to ride, and despite the groovy exterior, unpleasantly right-wing underneath''

"Here 'revolutionary' means the angry poor invading the presidential palace, not a tiny phone that's also a camera ...."

Who else but the great Dan Walsh Mr. Green

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NSR125RR - ZXR750H1 - ZX9R E1 - GSF600S - GSF600SK3 - VFR400-NC30 - SV1000N - ST1100-R - CBR900RR-R - GSF1200SK5 - GSF600SK1 - VFR1200FA - GSXR1000K2 - ZZR1400 D8F
www.prisonplanet.com

Hockeystorm65 · Spanner Monkey Joined: 08 Sep 2010 Karma :

On a more cerebral note......

"This is a valley of ashes - a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight."
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Good judgement comes from experience.....experience comes from bad judgement!

c_dug · Super Spammer Joined: 04 Sep 2007 Karma :

c_dug · Super Spammer Joined: 04 Sep 2007 Karma :

chris-red · Have you considered a TDM? Joined: 21 Sep 2005 Karma :

"In the beginning, the universe was created. This made a lot of people very angry, and has been widely regarded as a bad idea."
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Well, you know what they say. If you want to save the world, you have to push a few old ladies down the stairs.
Skudd:- Perhaps she just thinks you are a window licker and is being nice just in case she becomes another Jill Dando.
WANTED:- Fujinon (Fuji) M42 (Screw on) lenses, let me know if you have anything.

Gone · Nearly there... Joined: 01 Sep 2010 Karma :

chris-red · Have you considered a TDM? Joined: 21 Sep 2005 Karma :

bazza · World Chat Champion Joined: 27 Aug 2004 Karma :

Once a polly tito, Goldyloppers trittly-how in the early mordy, and she falolloped down the steps. Oh unfortunade for cracking of the eggers and the sheebs and the buttery full-falollop and graze the knee-clappers. So she had a Vaselubrious, rub it on and a quick healy huff and that was that.
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"That's it. You people have stood in my way long enough. I'm going to clown college."
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