In this week’s edition of Focus On, we take a look at those timeless classics that you avoided reading in high school because the Cliff Notes were so much shorter. These are all must read books that you should pull off your shelf, blow the dust off the jacket, and then immediately put back on the shelf because you still have to send out five cover letters //www.replicaforbest.co.uk/replica-breitling-watches-sale-for-uk.html, read two cases, and write an email to your professor explaining why you were playing Super Mario Brothers on your Nintendo emulator instead of listening to the insightful comments laid out by your classmates during LCA. So to save you some time, we’ve highlighted some thoughtful and deep quotes in these classic books to not only make you think about something other than EPS, but also to make us look intelligent and mature enough in order to impress those two hotties in Section J. You know who you are. So without further ado, bring on the existential and pretentious!
Catch 22
by Joseph Heller
“There was only one catch, and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.
‘That’s some catch, that Catch-22’ he observed. ‘It’s the best there is’ Doc Daneeka agreed.”
On the Road
By Jack Kerouac
“It was drizzling and mysterious at the beginning of our journey. I could see that it was all going to be one big sags of the mist replica watches. “Whooee!” yelled Dean. “Here we go!” And he hunched over the wheel and gunned her; he was back in his element, everybody could see that. We were delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noble function of the time, move.”
Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead
By Tom Stoppard
“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”
Brave new World
By Aldous Huxley
“And that,” put in the Director sententiously, “that is the secret of happiness and virtue- liking what you’ve got to do. All conditioning aims at that: making people like their unescapable social destiny.”
“Imagine the folly of allowing people to play elaborate games which do nothing whatever to increase consumption. It’s madness. Nowadays the Controllers won’t approve of any new game unless it can be shown that it requires at least as much apparatus as the most complicated of existing games.”
“But I don’t want comfort. I want God, I want poetry, I want real danger, I want freedom, I want goodness. I want sin.”
Lord of the Flies
By William Golding
“…there was a space around Henry, perhaps six yards in diameter, into which he dare not throw. Here, invisible yet strong, was the taboo of the old life. Round the squatting child was the protection of parents and school and policemen and the law. Roger’s arm was conditioned by a civilization that knew nothing of him and was in ruins.”
“His mind was crowded with memories; memories of the knowledge that had come to them when they closed in on the struggling pig, knowledge that they had outwitted a living thing, imposed their will upon it, taken away its life like a long satisfying drink.”
“He… gazed at the green and black mask before him, trying to remember what Jack looked like.
Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man’s heart, and the fall through the air of a true, wise friend called Piggy.”
Free to Choose
By Milton Friedman
“Fortunately, we are waking up. We are again recognizing the dangers of an overgoverned society, coming to understand that good objectives can be perverted by bad means, that reliance on the freedom of people to control their own lives in accordance with their own values is the surest way to achieve the full potential of a great society”
The Old Man and the Sea
By Ernest Hemingway
“Everything about him was old except his eyes and they were the same color as the sea and were cheerful and undefeated.”
“You are killing me, fish, the old man thought. But you have a right to. Never have I seen a greater, or more beautiful, or a calmer or more noble thing than you, brother. Come on and kill me. I do not care who kills who.”
Heart of Darkness
By Joseph Conrad
“I was within a hair’s breadth of the last opportunity for pronouncement, and I found with humiliation that probably I would have nothing to say. This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. Since I had peeped over the edge myself, I understand better the meaning of his stare, that could not see the flame of the candle, but was wide enough to embrace the whole universe, piercing enough to penetrate all the hearts that beat in the darkness.”
Beloved
by Toni Morrison
“For a used-to-be-slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love. The best thing, he knew, was to love just a little bit; everything, just a little bit, so when they broke its back, or shoved it in a croaker sack, well, maybe you’d have a little love left over for the next one”
“You are my Beloved
You are mine
You are mine
You are mine”
The Catcher in the Rye
By JD Salinger
“It was so nice and peaceful. Then, all of a sudden, you’d never guess what I saw on the wall. Another “F**k You.” It was written with a red crayon or something, right under the glass part of the wall, under the stones. That’s the whole trouble. You can’t ever find a place that’s nice and peaceful, because there isn’t any. You may think there is, but once you get there, when you’re not looking, somebody’ll sneak up and write “F**k You right under your nose.”
