Can I ask if you've ever been tearful over a quote?

[ArmsClary]

I'm reading 1984 for the first time (I know, better late than never). Please no spoilers

I've just come across the line "We shall meet in the place where there is no darkness." and it's made me really tearful

Now, I'm a little hormonal at present but it just got me wondering has a line from a book ever had this effect on you?

I'm probably going to be really disappointed once the outcome/context of this line is revealed further on but for now, I'll enjoy it!

Sobbing at A A Milne, my boy is NC with us and goodness it struck a cord - I do hope he is happy

What a lovely thread, thank you for taking the time to write the quotes out, and to analyse them. Off to buy Flowers for Algernon now as can't remember it from school.

"Mog was tired. She was dead tired".

From 'Goodbye Mog'. It makes me want to cry. I bizarrely feel a bit betrayed by the death of Mog .

And another one from me, sorry. From the end of Lord of the Flies. I've read it out loud to classes probably a hundred times over the years, but it still gets me every time.

'Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.'

@Pyewhacket mine is an Owen poem too, Futility. There are two separate lines that get me, "Are limbs, so dear achieved, are sides, full-nerved, still warm, too hard to stir?"

And:

"O what made fatuous sunbeams toil to break earth's sleep at all?"

The poem is about the futility of war but makes me think of the grief I've experienced after my lovely mum died in December.

The final page of Charlotte’s Web, aged about 8. I sobbed over it and as it was a borrowed book from Junior school I copied the words out so I could keep them.

@something2say

What a lovely thread, thank you for taking the time to write the quotes out, and to analyse them. Off to buy Flowers for Algernon now as can't remember it from school.

I'm glad I'm not the only one! Ivm going to order it too!

The only thing two things I remember are the way it made me feel & designing a new cover for it.

I hate that my memory is SO crap!

You are my people, dear Mumsnetters...so many quotes here that I'd forgotten plus some other lovely ones I want to read more around. My own favourite one, which has somehow got me through some tough times is WB Yeats: 'I have spread my dreams under your feet; Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.'

I love the Julien Barnes lines on bereavement - thank you for those.

The Railway Children quotes remind me of reading the book aloud to a class and suddenly being overcome with wanting to cry. I couldn't speak or continue for a while - it was awful! Many many years ago.

@Guardsman18

' I did not die, yet nothing of life remained' - a bit like the situation we're in now!

What is this from? I like it.

Just Googled it. Dante.

Not a quote exactly, but trying to read the bit in A Silver Sword where there's a fight at the soup kitchen and Ruth falls and a hand reaches for hers in the scrum and it turns out to be....

I got a lump in my throat and tears in my eyes so hard the DC had to pat my hand and wait a while. Won't spoil it but I got shivers down my spine just typing it again here. Best children's book ever.

I have never managed to read this article without crying- A brother in trouble- dealing with suicide. I warn you, if you read this, it is heart wrenching, absolutely raw.

In particular, for me:

My sister wept. My mum wept as she bent to him and said, "I love you." She ran a trembling hand over his face as she said, "You were my beautiful wee boy." And she said over and over again "Goodbye. Goodbye son. Goodbye."

and

Me, saying things like that. Things I cannot unsay. Things that follow me down the rabbit hole of sleep every night now.

@MolyHolyGuacamole

'I was lost, I was scared, but a story lead me home again' from Tiddler, made me shed a tear.

Yes, it's a children's story. To this day I don't know why it made me so emotional that a lost fish who told tall tales found his way home 😂

Maybe because it's similar to Finding Nemo. Then again I've cried at less.

I know what you mean - it was Monkey Puzzle that always used to get me "Come little monkey, come, come, come, it's time I took you home to Mum". They're both the stories of lost children really, aren't they? I suppose that's what hits you in the feels!

A couple of slightly more niche Harry Potter ones I just love, as an adult reading these really makes me tear up.

Hagrid Gives Harry a Gift at the end of Philosophers Stone
It seemed to be a handsome, leather-covered book. It was full of wizard photographs. Smiling and waving at him from every page were his mother and father.
"Sent owls off ter all yer parents' old school friends, askin' fer photos... Knew yeh didn' have any... D'yeh like it?"
Harry couldn't speak, but Hagrid understood.

Molly After Harrys Traumatic Experience in Goblet of Fire
Mrs Weasley set the potion down on the bedside cabinet, bent down, and put her arms around Harry. He had no memory of ever being hugged like this, as though by a mother.

I read "Angela And The Baby Jesus" to a class, and reached the end where little Angela is worried about the baby Jesus in the Christmas crib being so cold. The priest tells her gently not to worry: "When we're not here, his mother makes sure he's nice and warm."

This quote from Slaughterhouse 5 in which the main character is visiting his mother in a nursing home:

She swallowed hard, shed some tears. Then she gathered energy from all over her ruined body, even from her toes and fingertips. At last she had accumulated enough to whisper this complete sentence: 'How did I get so old?’

Placemark for later

@Thewishingchair123

The final page of Charlotte’s Web, aged about 8. I sobbed over it and as it was a borrowed book from Junior school I copied the words out so I could keep them.

Yes. This. Can't actually read it out loud.

Same with 'and on jumped snail after snail after snail' from The Snail and the Whale' which is imho one of the greatest stories ever told.

crawled, not jumped.

'Stick lady's lonely, the children are sad. It won't feel like Christmas without their stick dad'

When I was pregnant I could hardly read this story without sobbing.

Pretty much the entire of Goodnight, Mr Tom.
Just tried to think of the bits that really got to me and I’m already welling up.

Seamus Heaney on the death of his little brother when he was a child

“A four foot box, a foot for every year.”

I love lots of bits from How to be Famous by Caitlin Moran...
When John Kite and Johanna finally get together: “You are the new religion. You are the new craze. You are the next stage in evolution. You are so palpably my superior, in every way, that I tremble like a child in your presence. You make my head spin. You make my heart burst. You make my soul explode, every fucking minute I am with you. What I am inescapably heading towards is , in this monologue, which might be the last thing I ever say, is: Dutch, I'm in love with you.’

The Hope Diamond quote: “This is what happens, when it feels like the weight of the world is crushing right down on you. You fear it’s going to change you forever. And you’re right. It is. It’s going to turn you into something that is both beautiful, and the most indestructible thing on the planet. I am both touched, and amused, by how apt its name is: Hope. “I relate to you,” I say to the Hope Diamond, as I stand there, staring at it. “I get what you are saying. You are the sparkliest metaphor I have ever seen.”

And the whole essay on teen music fans and why artists should be honoured to have them.

@LookToTreblesGoingTreblesGone I came on just to say Charlie Macksey. I was in floods reading his work x