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Lines in books that make your throat catch

647 replies

pongping · 25/08/2013 08:50

Just been re-reading When We Were Very Young, and the lines in the last poem, Vespers, bring a tear to my eye every time:

Hush, hush, whisper who dares,
Christopher Robin is saying his prayers

I'm not sure why - I think it's the beauty of the innocence, the image of a lost world (the book is all nurses and stockings)?

In fact, just the title of the collection gives me a shiver.

OP posts:
scaredysausage · 26/08/2013 13:10

YY to Snape and Dobby.

And the bit at the end of the first book when Dumbledore gives Neville house points for standing up to his friends and Gryffindor win the house cup.

Maryz · 26/08/2013 13:12

This reply has been deleted

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

VerySmallSqueak · 26/08/2013 13:14

Shit,of all the daft things (because he's not really real is he ?),that Dobby quote is really preying on my mind.

OnTheBottomWithAWomansWeekly · 26/08/2013 13:41

pongping my brother flat out refuses to read the other two books in that trilogy because of what happened to Manchee.

Bastard lent me the first book though and didn't warn me!

MrsCliveStanden · 26/08/2013 13:47

Death is just another path? One we must all take. The gray rain-curtain of this world falls back, and all changes to silver glass? And then you see it." "What? Gandalf? ?See what?" "White shores?and beyond. The far green country under a swift sunrise. "Well, that isn't so bad." "No?No, it isn't."

Heard this in movie format just after my Mum died. Still slays me.

DisgraceToTheYChromosome · 26/08/2013 14:32

A bloke writes: We don't do weepy very much, but all my male friends agree that it's the two scenes in Gladiator:

"My name is Maximus Decimus Meridius, father to a murdered son, husband to a murdered wife, and I will have my vengeance in this world or the next."

And the final scene as he opens the door in the wall and they're running down the hill...

AvonCallingBarksdale · 26/08/2013 15:16

Not a book, but from some Rob Ryan art:

"I used to live in one of those little houses down there and I still remember every road and field and every brick and stone. Every single thing that you can see was a part of the map of my entire life. The raging battle ground of all my victories and defeats from up here just looks like a pretty pattern. Every single minute was a struggle, but not one second goes by when I don't wish that I was back down there mixing it up on good old planet Earth."

Can barely make it to the end of that without collapsing.

EverybodyKnows · 26/08/2013 15:35

?the loss pressed down on her chest and came up into her throat. it was a fine cry loud and long but it had no bottom and no top, just circles and circles of sorrow.?
― Toni Morrison, Sula

EverybodyKnows · 26/08/2013 15:38

Oops Cut & Paste Fail Grin

SarahAndFuck · 26/08/2013 15:43

Thank you everyone. And you know, this sort of crying is the good sort. If that makes sense.

There's a bit in Lord of the Rings, too much to quote, when they are in the mines of Moria and they read the account of the dwarves who have died there and it says that there's something in the dark with them and repeats "we can't get out...we can't get out" that you can just feel how desperate and awful it was to be trapped.

There was a book I read when I was about six or seven, can't even remember the title now. But a boy finds an orphaned mouse and takes care of it. And then his parents make him let it go because it's a wild creature, so he takes it out to the woodpile and puts it down and he cries, and the mouse sits there waiting to be picked up again but the boy walks away and the mouse doesn't know why his friend has left him. It's thirty years later and I'm still not recovered from the upset of that book.

EverSoNear · 26/08/2013 15:51

?Shooting stars are not stars at all. They re just rocks that enter the atmosphere and catch fire under friction. What we wish on when we see one is only a trail of debris.?

?In the English language there are orphans and widows, but there is no word for the parents who loses a child.?

My Sisters Keeper. J. Picoult

LittleMachine · 26/08/2013 16:13

I started re-reading Anne's House of Dreams this afternoon.

Gilbert says 'I've found a nest for us, Anne.'

That made my throat catch a little.
As opposed to breaking down into gut wrenching sobs of trauma like AA Milne.

There are some very sad, real stories on this thread. I'm so sorry to all of you who have suffered such awful losses.

BestIsWest · 26/08/2013 16:33

As one who has older teenage/ young adult children, this, by C Day Lewis, always makes me cry.

It is eighteen years ago, almost to the day ?
A sunny day with leaves just turning,
The touch-lines new-ruled ? since I watched you play
Your first game of football, then, like a satellite
Wrenched from its orbit, go drifting away

Behind a scatter of boys. I can see
You walking away from me towards the school
With the pathos of a half-fledged thing set free
Into a wilderness, the gait of one
Who finds no path where the path should be.

That hesitant figure, eddying away
Like a winged seed loosened from its parent stem,
Has something I never quite grasp to convey
About nature?s give-and-take ? the small, the scorching
Ordeals which fire one?s irresolute clay.

I have had worse partings, but none that so
Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly
Saying what God alone could perfectly show ?
How selfhood begins with a walking away,
And love is proved in the letting go.

DolphinnosePotatoes · 26/08/2013 16:34

Another Harry Potter line from me... I always found Dumbledore's speech following Cedric Diggory's death very moving:

'Remember Cedric. Remember, if the time should come when you have make a choice between what is right and what is easy, remember what happened to a boy who was good, and kind, and brave, because he strayed across the path of Lord Voldemort. Remember Cedric Diggory.'

I am also incapable of reading Goodbye Mog without bursting into tears!

Alisvolatpropiis · 26/08/2013 16:43

?It?s dark now and I am very tired. I love you, always. Time is nothing.?

Time Travellers Wife.

I have to say I cried whilst reading this thread before posting my own quote.

EnjoyEverySandwich · 26/08/2013 16:45

An old man I knew used to recite this poem in the pub when he had had a few. :) I eventually tracked it down, and it's by Thomas Campbell.

On the green banks of Shannon, when Sheelah was nigh,
No blithe Irish lad was so happy as I;
No harp like my own could so cheerily play,
And wherever I went was my poor dog Tray.

When at last I was forced from my Sheelah to part,
She said (while the sorrow was big at her heart),
"Oh, remember your Sheelah when far, far away;
And be kind, my dear Pat, to our poor dog Tray."

Poor dog! he was faithful and kind, to be sure,
And he constantly loved me, although I was poor;
When the sour-looking folks sent me heartless away,
I had always a friend in my poor dog Tray.

When the road was so dark, and the night was so cold,
And Pat and his dog were grown weary and old,
How snugly we slept in my old coat of grey,
And he licked me for kindness, my poor dog Tray.

Though my wallet was scant, I remembered his case,
Nor refused my last crust to his pitiful face;
But he died at my feet on a cold winter day,
And I played a sad lament for my poor dog Tray.

Where now shall I go, poor, forsaken, and blind?
Can I find one to guide me, so faithful and kind?
To my sweet native village, so far, far away,
I can never return with my poor dog Tray.

Chubfuddler · 26/08/2013 16:45

I started crying when reading that passage to DS dolphin, but I was pregnant so I choose to blame hormones.

bassetfeet · 26/08/2013 16:59

BestisWest that poem is one I read and reread . Lovely poem.

TheChocolateTeapot · 26/08/2013 17:01

Mine doesn't work too well out of context and it catches because it is so full of optimism. It comes close to the end of one of my favourite books (which I abandoned twice before finally getting into!) - The Shipping News:
?And it may be that love sometimes occurs without pain or misery.?
Aahhh

Tabby1963 · 26/08/2013 17:02

?Dogs' lives are short, but you know that going in. You know the pain is coming, you're going to lose a dog, and there's going to be great anguish, so you live fully in the moment with her, never fail to share her joy or delight in her innocence, because you can't support the illusion that a dog can be your lifelong companion.?
― Dean Koontz, The Darkest Evening of the Year

....and then she (Nickie, the amazing retriever who I loved so much in the book) dies.

I had to stop reading the book at this point because I was so upset (on the bus lol).

DharmaLovesDraco · 26/08/2013 18:12

Life of Ma Parker She's lost her grandson and is reminiscing but it's too painful and she has to keep stopping herself, until it gets to the point where she can't stop herself from breaking down, but realises she has nowhere to go where she is safe to go to pieces.

The bit that makes me cry is this bit:

"Well, what'll you give your gran?"
He gave a shy little laugh and pressed closer. She felt his eyelid quivering against her cheek. "I ain't got nothing," he murmured...

This whole thread has made me cry :(

spiderlight · 26/08/2013 18:29

DS recreated 'Daddy - my Daddy' the first time I was well enough to pick him up from school myself, having been very ill in hospital when he started Reception and for several weeks afterwards. I was standing in the playground, feeling very weak and wobbly and not knowing a soul, and then he came to the classroom door and saw me (he wasn't expecting me), shouted 'Mummy!' and then turned to his teacher with the hugest grin ever and said 'My mummy!' You can imagine the aftermath.... Blush

OnTheBottomWithAWomansWeekly · 26/08/2013 18:40

this poem makes me weep - the highwayman

Heard it recited by an 85 year old lady at an ICA weekend (Irish equivalent of the WI). She also had some recitations that she had written herself, she was brilliant.

Strokethefurrywall · 26/08/2013 18:44

Annnnnnd....... bawling.

TheUglyFuckling · 26/08/2013 18:53

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