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**Warning: This Thread May Contain Spoilers**
If you're like me, you may have gotten into the habit of reading with a pencil in hand, marking passages and words, etc. Since I've purchased and used my Kindle, I sort of fell off that wagon with their highlight feature. However, the writing in "The Goldfinch" has been so wonderful, I've made an effort to use the highlight feature while reading this. I've marked passages, sentences, words, and quotes that I thought were written so well, were quirky, unique, etc. If you've done the same, let's share here!
To kick it off, a few of my favorites have been:
p. 110 - "I remembered all too well the warm slick feel of his blood on my hands - especially since in some way the blood was still there, and I could smell it and taste it in my mouth, and it made me understand why people talked about blood brothers and how blood bound people together. My English class had read Macbeth in the fall, but only now was it starting to make sense why Lady Macbeth could never scrub the blood off her hands, why it was still there after she washed it away."
p. 151 - "unlike the Hobie of my first visit, with his bedraggled aspect of an elegant but mistreated polar bear" (I LOVE this image - I can actually see Hobie in my mind. Tall, greying, looming over Theo. Elegant in movement and mannerisms yet unkempt enough to seem "bedraggled")
p. 154 - "buckets of charm" (I loved this, too. It seemed like such a WASPY, bourgeois thing to say)
The imagery in this excerpt was phenomenal -
p. 172 - "...without even realizing it you slipped away sometimes into 1850, a world of ticking clocks and creaking floorboards, copper pots and baskets of turnips and onions in the kitchen, candle flames leaning all to the left in the draft of an opened door and tall parlor windows billowing and swagged like ball gowns, cool quiet rooms where old things slept." (Doesn't that just put you directly into this darkened, well-worn house full of history and stories?)
p. 392 - "The shame that tormented me was all the more corrosive for having no very clear origin: I didn't know why I felt so tainted, and worthless, and wrong - only that I did, and whenever I looked up from my books I was swamped by slimy waters rushing in from all sides"
p. 394 - "...Hobie lived and wafted like some great sea mammal in his own mild atmosphere, the dark brown of tea stains and tobacco, where every clock in the house said something different and time didn't actually correspond to the standard measure but instead meandered along at its own sedate tick-tock, obeying the pace of his antique-crowded backwater, far from the factory-build, epoxy-glued version of the world."
p.416 - "...a fragrant butterscotch gloss that was thick like candy and satisfying to stir in the pan" (again, I can 100% see this. I can feel the satisfaction of stirring something viscous and glossy in a pan - that's how I feel when I've made caramel before!)
p. 418 - "'Always remember, the person we're really working for is the person who's restoring the piece a hundred years from now. He's the one we want to impress'"
Theo also says such beautiful things about Pippa:
p. 462 - "She was the missing kingdom, the unbruised part of myself I'd lost with my mother...a snowstorm of fascination..."
"...the thought of her flooded every corner of my mind with light and poured brightness into miraculous lofts I hadn't even known were there, vistas that seemed to exist not at all except in relationship to her."
Talking about the night man, Kenneth, in the Barbour's building:
p. 470 - "Even in some smoky post-catasrophe Manhattan you could imagine him swaying genially at the door in rags of his former uniform, the Barbours up in the apartment burning old National Geographics for warmth, living off gin and tinned crabmeat"
p. 513 (about the Mrs. Barbour in her current, fragile state) - "...whose happiness made me feel reassured and nourished in channels of my heart which had stood scraped dry for years."
Please share yours if you have a chance!
If you're like me, you may have gotten into the habit of reading with a pencil in hand, marking passages and words, etc. Since I've purchased and used my Kindle, I sort of fell off that wagon with their highlight feature. However, the writing in "The Goldfinch" has been so wonderful, I've made an effort to use the highlight feature while reading this. I've marked passages, sentences, words, and quotes that I thought were written so well, were quirky, unique, etc. If you've done the same, let's share here!
To kick it off, a few of my favorites have been:
p. 110 - "I remembered all too well the warm slick feel of his blood on my hands - especially since in some way the blood was still there, and I could smell it and taste it in my mouth, and it made me understand why people talked about blood brothers and how blood bound people together. My English class had read Macbeth in the fall, but only now was it starting to make sense why Lady Macbeth could never scrub the blood off her hands, why it was still there after she washed it away."
p. 151 - "unlike the Hobie of my first visit, with his bedraggled aspect of an elegant but mistreated polar bear" (I LOVE this image - I can actually see Hobie in my mind. Tall, greying, looming over Theo. Elegant in movement and mannerisms yet unkempt enough to seem "bedraggled")
p. 154 - "buckets of charm" (I loved this, too. It seemed like such a WASPY, bourgeois thing to say)
The imagery in this excerpt was phenomenal -
p. 172 - "...without even realizing it you slipped away sometimes into 1850, a world of ticking clocks and creaking floorboards, copper pots and baskets of turnips and onions in the kitchen, candle flames leaning all to the left in the draft of an opened door and tall parlor windows billowing and swagged like ball gowns, cool quiet rooms where old things slept." (Doesn't that just put you directly into this darkened, well-worn house full of history and stories?)
p. 392 - "The shame that tormented me was all the more corrosive for having no very clear origin: I didn't know why I felt so tainted, and worthless, and wrong - only that I did, and whenever I looked up from my books I was swamped by slimy waters rushing in from all sides"
p. 394 - "...Hobie lived and wafted like some great sea mammal in his own mild atmosphere, the dark brown of tea stains and tobacco, where every clock in the house said something different and time didn't actually correspond to the standard measure but instead meandered along at its own sedate tick-tock, obeying the pace of his antique-crowded backwater, far from the factory-build, epoxy-glued version of the world."
p.416 - "...a fragrant butterscotch gloss that was thick like candy and satisfying to stir in the pan" (again, I can 100% see this. I can feel the satisfaction of stirring something viscous and glossy in a pan - that's how I feel when I've made caramel before!)
p. 418 - "'Always remember, the person we're really working for is the person who's restoring the piece a hundred years from now. He's the one we want to impress'"
Theo also says such beautiful things about Pippa:
p. 462 - "She was the missing kingdom, the unbruised part of myself I'd lost with my mother...a snowstorm of fascination..."
"...the thought of her flooded every corner of my mind with light and poured brightness into miraculous lofts I hadn't even known were there, vistas that seemed to exist not at all except in relationship to her."
Talking about the night man, Kenneth, in the Barbour's building:
p. 470 - "Even in some smoky post-catasrophe Manhattan you could imagine him swaying genially at the door in rags of his former uniform, the Barbours up in the apartment burning old National Geographics for warmth, living off gin and tinned crabmeat"
p. 513 (about the Mrs. Barbour in her current, fragile state) - "...whose happiness made me feel reassured and nourished in channels of my heart which had stood scraped dry for years."
Please share yours if you have a chance!
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