This character appears in 240 books.
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Fathers and Sons
by Ivan Turgenev
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“But the heat of noon passes, then comes evening and night, bringing a return to the peaceful haven where sweetly sleep the tired and weary...”
“Vulgarity is often a welcome interlude in life. It slackens strings that are too highly strung and sobers self-confident or presumptuous feelings by a reminder of their kinship with it.”
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A Song of Ice and Fire: Book 1A Game of Thrones
by George R. R. Martin
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“Maester Luwin made a little boy of clay, baked him till he was hard and brittle, dressed him in Bran's clothes, and flung him off a roof. Bran remembered the way he shattered. "But I never fall," he said, falling.”
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Kafka on the Shore
by Haruki Murakami
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“Time weighs down on you like an old, ambiguous dream. You keep on moving, trying to slip through it. But even if you go to the ends of the earth, you won't be able to escape it. Still, you have to go there-to the edge of the world. There's something you can't do unless you get there.”
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Trilogy of the Rat: Book 3A Wild Sheep Chase
by Haruki Murakami
Narrator: The unnamed narrator. Coping up with his PR/advertising business and recent divorce, our narrator was a 'mediocre' life in Tokyo. Until his whole life gets thrust into a surreal adventure to find The Sheep.
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Slaughterhouse-Five
Or, the Children's Crusade: A Duty Dance with Death
by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Narrator: A witty, satirical voice who is Vonnegut himself
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The Unbearable Lightness of Being
by Milan Kundera
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“...the idea of eternal return implies a perspective from which things appear other than as we know them: they appear without the mitigating circumstance of their transitory nature. This mitigating circumstance prevents us from coming to a verdict. For how can we condemn something that is ephemeral, in transit? in the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine... in this world everything is pardoned in advance and therefore cynically permitted."”
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The Lord of the RingsThe Lord of the Rings (collective work)
The Fellowship of the Ring / The Two Towers / The Return of the King
by J. R. R. Tolkien
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“It was Sam's first view of a battle of Men against Men... He was glad that he could not see the dead face. He wondered what the man's name was and where he came from; and if he was really evil of heart, or what lies or threats had led him on the long march from his home; and if he would not really rather have stayed there in peace.”
“So passed the sword of the Barrow-downs... But glad would he have been to know its fate who wrought it slowly long ago in the North-kingdom when the Dúnedain were young, and chief among their foes was the dread realm of Angmar and its sorcerer king. No other blade, not though mightier hands had wielded it, would have dealt that foe a wound so bitter, cleaving the undead flesh, breaking the spell that knit his unseen sinews to his will.”
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Heart of Darkness
by Joseph Conrad
Narrator: The narrator whose identity is never stated is listening to Marlow tell his story of finding Kurtz.
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One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“It was cold sitting in the mess hall and most of the men ate with their caps on, but without hurrying, chasing bits of rotten fish among the cabbage leaves and spitting the bones out on the table. When there was a whole pile of them, someone would sweep them off before the next gang came, and they were ground underfoot on the floor.Spitting the bones out on the floor was thought bad manners.”
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A Painted House
by John Grisham
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“The hill people and the Mexicans arrived on the same day...”
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White Teeth
by Zadie Smith
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“No one told Archie that lurking in the Diagilo family tree were two hysteric aunts, an uncle who talked to aubergines and a cousin who wore his clothes back to front.”
“Once the car started to fill with gas, he had experienced the obligatory flashback of his life to date.”
“That kind of inability to improve is really very rare. That kind of consistency is miraculous, in a way.”
“For he is in a past-tense, future-perfect kind of mood. He is in maybe this, maybe that kind of mood.”
“The principles of Christianity and Sod's Law (also known as Murphy's Law) are the same: Everything happens to me, for me.”
“Big eyes, like a child's or a baby seal's; the physiognomy of innocence - looking at Archie Jones is like looking at something that expects to be clubbed round the head any second.”
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Lost in the City
by Edward P. Jones
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“Offer a crust of bread to a sick bird and you often drew back a bloody finger.”
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The Color Purple
by Alice Walker
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“She say, Celie, tell the truth, have you ever found God in church? I never did. I just found a bunch of folks hoping for him to show. Any God I ever felt in church I brought in with me. And I think all the other folks did too. They come to church to share God, not to find him.”
“Here us is, I thought, two old fools left over from love, keeping each other company under the stars.”
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Lilith
A Romance
by George MacDonald
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“Might a man at any moment step beyond the realm of order, and become the sport of the lawless?”
“Indeed, who was I? It would be no answer to say I was who! Then I understood that I did not know myself, did not know what I was, had no grounds on which to determine that I was one and not another. As for the name I went by in my own world, I had forgotten it, and did not care to recall it, for it meant nothing, and what it might be was plainly of no consequence here. I had indeed almost forgotten that there it was a custom for everybody to have a name!”
“No man knows it when he is making an idiot of himself.”
“The direct sunlight brought out the painting wonderfully; for the first time I seemed to see it, and for the first time it seemed to respond to my look.”
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1984
by George Orwell
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“To hang on from day to day and from week to week, spinning out a present that had no future, seemed an unconquerable instinct, just as one's lungs will always draw the next breath so long as there is air available.”
“How could you make appeal to the future when not a trace of you, not even an anonymous word scribbled on a piece of paper, could physically survive?”
“For, after all, how do we know that two and two make four? Or that the force of gravity works? Or that the past is unchangeable? If both the past and the external world exist only in the mind, and if the mind itself is controllable -- what then?”
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Hercule Poirot: Book 4The Murder of Roger Ackroyd
by Agatha Christie
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“"It is odd, when you have a secret belief of your own which you do not wish to acknowledge, the voicing of it by someone else will rouse you to a fury of denial."”
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The Grapes of Wrath
by John Steinbeck
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quicklime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is a failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.”
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Birdsong
A Novel of Love and War
by Sebastian Faulks
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“Jack already immune to death, let their white faces drift from his memory”
“It was not a premonition, more a recognition, he told himself, that the difference between death and life was not one of fact but merely of time.”
“So, as she had thought, it was possible to keep a secret: people's nosiness was finally exceeded by their indifference; or, to put it more generously, you were allowed to make your own life.”
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House
by Frank Peretti, Ted Dekker
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“The light came into the darkness, and the darkness did not understand it.”
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Book 1The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
by Douglas Adams
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much--the wheel, New York, wars and so on--while all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man--for precisely the same reasons.”
“Nothing travels faster than the speed of light with the possible exception of bad news, which obeys its own special laws.”
“Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.”
“Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was, Oh no, not again. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now.”
“The storm had now definitely abated, and what thunder there was now grumbled over more distant hills, like a man saying ‘And another thing...’ twenty minutes after admitting he’s lost the argument.”
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Sense and Sensibility
by Jane Austen
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“Elinor agreed to it all, for she did not think he deserved the compliment of rational opposition.”
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Heidi
or, Heidi's Years of Wandering and Learning
by Johanna Spyri
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“Klara was perfectly willing to stay alone with the goat. It was so tame that it nestled up to this new friend and ate the leaves slowly out of her fingers. Klara was delighted. She realized how wonderful it was to be able to help someone else and not always be obliged to take help from others. She wanted to do something to give pleasure to some person, as she was now pleasing Schneehöpli.”
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Earthsea: Book 3The Farthest Shore
by Ursula K. Le Guin
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“The mind of the magician takes delight in tricks; a mage is atrickster”
“So the first step out of childhood is made all at once, without looking before or behind, without caution,and nothing held in reserve.”
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Taoism and Winnie-the-Pooh: Book 1The Tao of Pooh
by Benjamin Hoff
Narrator: teaches taoism through some of Winnie the Poohs stories.
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The Christmas Child : A Story about Finding Your Way Home for the Holidays (Lucado, Max)
by Max Lucado
Narrator: Male journalist, was born in Clearwater but adopted as an infant and moved to Chicago.
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Breakfast of Champions
by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“... the dying children sauntered off, their feet sticking to the planet, coming unstuck, then sticking again.”
“So, in the interests of survival, they trained themselves to be agreeing machines instead of thinking machines. All their minds had to do was to discover what other people were thinking, and then they thought that, too.”
“Once I understood what was making America such a dangerous, unhappy nation of people who had nothing to do with real life, I resolved to shun storytelling. I would write about life. Every person would be exactly as important as any other. Nothing would be left out. Let others bring order to chaos. I would bring chaos to order, instead.”
“I had given him a life not worth living, but I had also given him an iron will to live. This was a common combination on the planet earth.”
“Sometimes I wonder about the Creator of the Universe.”
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White Fang
by Jack London
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“"In order to face the constant danger of hurt and even of destruction, his predatory and protective faculties were unduly developed. He became quicker of movement than the other dogs, swifter of foot, craftier, deadlier, more lithe, more lean with ironlike muscle and sinew, more enduring, more cruel, more ferocious, and more intelligent. He had to become all these things, else he would not have held his own nor survived the hostile environment in which he found himself."”
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Stardust
by Neil Gaiman
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“It had occasionally been remarked upon that it is as easy to overlook something large and obvious as it is to overlook something small and niggling, and that the large things one overlooks can often cause problems.”
“He could no longer reconcile his old idea of giving the star to Victoria Forester with his current notion that the star was not a thing to be passed from hand to hand, but a true person in all respects and no kind of thing at all.”
“The sun set, and a huge spring moon appeared, high already in the heavens. A chill breeze blew.”
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Loser
by Jerry Spinelli
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“"My handwriting is atrocious!" he announces to his parents at the dinner table that day. His father, seeing how proud his son is, replies, "One thousand congratulations." His mother gives him a star. pg. 54”
“"But new eyes arrive nevertheless. Big-kid eyes replace little-kid eyes. Little kid eyes are scoopers. They just scoop up everything they see and swallow it whole, no questions asked. Big-kid eyes are picky." p. 99”
“"He knows that he could lose a thousand races and his dad would never give up on him. He knows that if he ever springs a leak or throws a gasket, his dad will be there with duct tape and chewing gum to patch him up, that no matter how much he rattles and knocks, he'll always be a honeybug to his dad, never a clunker." pg. 108”
“It never occurs to Zinkoff that all the fuss is more than a simple A can account for. It never occurs to him that the loudest and showiest of his congratulators are really not congratulating him at all, but mocking him for blundering into the only A he is ever likely to get. pg. 135”
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The War of the Worlds
by H. G. Wells
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“Yet so vain is man, and so blinded by his vanity, that no writer, up to the very end of the nineteenth century, expressed any idea that intelligent life may have developed there far, or indeed at all, beyond its earthly level.”
“And before we judge them too harshly we must remember what ruthless and utter destruction our own species has wrought, not only upon animals, such as the vanished bison and the dodo, but upon its inferior races. The Tasmanians, in spite of their human likeness, were entirely swept out of existence in a war of extermination waged by European immigrants, in the space of fifty years. Are we such apostles of mercy as to complain if the Martians warred in the same spirit?”
“So some respectable dodo in the Mauritius might have lorded it in his nest, and discussed the arrival of that shipful of pitiless sailors in want of animal food. 'We will peck them to death tomorrow, my dear.'”
“Never before in the history of warfare had destruction been so indiscriminate and so universal.”
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Once and Future KingThe Once and Future King (collective work)
by T. H. White
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“We civilized people, who would immediately fly to divorce courts and alimony and other forms of attrition in such circumstances, can afford to look with proper contempt upon the spineless cuckold. But Arthur was only a medieval savage. He did no understand our civilization, and knew no better than to try to be too decent for the degradation of jealousy.”
“Like likes like, they say- and at least they are certain that her men were generous. She must have been generous too. It is difficult to write about a real person.”
“One of them who was called Baptista Porta seems to have invented the cinema - though he sensiibly decided not to develop it.”
“Another little boy, this time a king of four years old in Scotland, might be sadly issuing a royal mandate to his Nannie, which empowered her to spank him without being guilty of High Treason.”
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Holes: Book 1Holes
by Louis Sachar
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“Stanley could hear his heart beat. Each beat told him he was still alive, at least for one more second.”
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The Neverending Story
by Michael Ende
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“If you have never wept bitter tears because a wonderful story has come to an end and you must take your leave of the characters with whom you have shared so many adventures, whom you have loved and admired, for whom you have hoped and feared, and without whose company life seems empty and meaningless.”
“Human passions have mysterious ways, in children as well as grown-ups. Those affected by them can't explain them, and those who haven't known them have no understanding of them at all. Some people risk their lives to conquer a mountain peak. No one, not even they themselves, can really explain why. Others ruin themselves trying to win the heart of a certain person who wants nothing to do with them. Still others are destroyed by their devotion to the pleasures of the table. Some are so bent on winning a game of chance that they lose everything they own, and some sacrifice everything for a dream that can never come true.Some think their only hope of happiness lies in being somewhere else, and spend their whole lives traveling from place to place. And some find no rest until they have become powerful. In short, there are as many different passions as there are people.”
“Yet Bastian knew he couldn't leave without the book. It was clear to him that he had only come to the shop because of this book. It had called him in some mysterious way, because it wanted to be his, because it had somehow always belonged to him.”
“The Childlike Empress – as her title indicates – was looked upon as the ruler over all the innumerable provinces of the Fantastican Empire, but in reality she was far more than a ruler; she was something entirely different.She didn't rule, she had never used force or made use of her power. She never issued commands and she never judged anyone. She never interfered with anyone and never had to defend herself against any assailant; for no one would have thought of rebelling against her or of harming her in any way. In her eyes all her subjects were equal.She was simply there in a special way. She was the centre of all life in Fantastica.And every creature, whether good or bad, beautiful or ugly, merry or solemn, foolish or wise – all owed their existence to her existence. Without her, nothing could have lived, any more than a human body can live if it has lost its heart.”
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Jack McEvoy: Book 1The Poet
by Michael Connelly
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“Something like, "Working at a newspaper is like running in front of a thresher."”
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The Tawny Man: Book 2Golden Fool
by Robin Hobb
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“Perhaps having the courage to find a better path is having the courage to risk making new mistakes.”
“To recognize you are the source of your own loneliness is not a cure for it. But it is a step towards seeing thatit is not inevitable, and that such a choice is not irrevocable.”
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The Farseer Trilogy: Book 1Assassin's Apprentice
by Robin Hobb
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“I believe that knife is still there.”
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Valis Trilogy: Book 1Valis
by Philip K. Dick
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“What we have here is a Zen paradox. That which makes no sense makes the most sense. I am being caught in a sin of the highest magnitude: using Aristotelian two-value logic: 'A thing is either A or not-A' (The Law of the Excluded Middle). Everybody knows that Aristotelian two-value logic is fucked.”
“An irruption from the collective unconscious, Jung taught, can wipe out the fragile individual ego. In the depths of the collective the archetypes slumber; if aroused, they can heal or they can destroy. This is the danger of the archetypes; the opposite qualities are not yet separated. Bipolarization into paired opposites does not occur until consciousness occurs.”
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The Satanic Verses
by Salman Rushdie
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“Question: What is the opposite of faith? Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself a kind of belief. Doubt.”
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Book of Ember: Book 3The Prophet of Yonwood
by Jeanne DuPrau
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“All over the world, people who believed in one truth fought against people who believed in a different truth, all of them believing their's was the only real truth, and all of them willing to do anything – absolutely anything - to defend it.”
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Dirk Gently: Book 1Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency
by Douglas Adams
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“One, a young man, was tall, thing and angular; even muffled inside a heavy dark coat he walked a little like an affronted heron. The other was small, roundish and moved with an ungainly restlessness, like a number of elderly squirrels trying to escape from a sack.”
“The Electric Monk was a labour-saving device, like a dishwasher or a video recorder. Dishwashers washed tedious things for you, thus saving you the bother of washing them yourself, video recorders watched tedious television for you, thus saving you the bother of looking at it yourself; Electric Monks believed things for you, thus saving you what was becoming an increasingly onerous task, that of believing all the things the world expected you to believe.”
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The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Book 5Mostly Harmless
by Douglas Adams
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools.”
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The Stand
by Stephen King
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“The beauty of religious mania is that it has the power to explain everything. Once God (or Satan) is accepted as the first cause of everything which happens in the mortal world nothing is left to chance….or change. Once such incantatory phrase such as “ we see now through a glass darkly” and “mysterious are the ways He chooses His wonders to perform” are mastered, logic can be happily tossed out the window. Religious mania is one of the few infallible ways of responding to the world’s vagaries, because it totally eliminates pure accident. To the true religious maniac, it’s ALL on purpose.”
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A Thousand Acres
by Jane Smiley
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“We went to church not to give thanks, but to pay our respects.”
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Chocolate Fever
by Robert Kimmel Smith
Memorable Quotes by Narrator:
“there are some people who say that Henry Green wasn't really born, but was hatched, fully grown, from a chocolate bean.”
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