Post for 1.22.25: Funny Book Quotes

Participation in this week's Long & Short Reviews blog challenge is down. "Funny book quotes" requires us to get up, find a book, page through it, find a quote, and quote it exactly...

Ah, but I just read a review copy of a book that had some good funny lines. This was  Rangikura by Tayi Tibble. It's a short book of short essays and free verse. Do not be deceived. It's a challenging read; among other things the author throws in a Maori word or phrase on almost every page. If you are from New Zealand, or if you don't mind looking up Maori words, you'll probably like the book. It's mostly about the universal experience of being young. Millennials can relate; the rest of us can reminisce.

The quote, which also appears in my reviews:

"she realised that life

was not going to be fair

but it could be

ferocious"

I like funny books. Douglas Adams', Mark Twain's, Erma Bombeck's, and Florence King's funniest are in the older part of the house. Y'know what? It's 9 degrees Fahrenheit outside and when I crawl out from under the pile of knitted fabric here on the screen porch, I'm sprinting straight to the warm room where I shall let the cats in, turn on the hot-air fan, and burrow into an even bigger pile of knitted blankets. I am not going into the older, colder part of the house to look for books.

There are lines I can quote, or possibly misquote, from memory. Look these up before reusing. They're not even the funniest lines in the books; they're just the ones that came to mind first. Generally I think the funniest bits in a book are entire scenes where the comic effect has built up slowly. Some really funny bits that come to mind, e.g. from Terry Pratchett, aren't here because I read them later in life and am not confident about quoting them from memory; nearly all of these lines come from books I read before I was full-grown, which is why the list, like publishers' lists of that time, has no Cultural Diversity. I just want to indulge in a half-hour or so of seeing how many I can remember...

"Do people want fire that can be fitted nasally?"

--Douglas Adams, in The Restaurant at the End of the Universe, when the various telephone cleaners, personnel managers, and other "useless b*y loonies" who've been sent away from the planet Golgafrincham are trying to find out how to make a fire

"If it had not been a pleasure it would have been a duty to hate Uncle Wilbie Culpeper."

--Joan Aiken, The Embroidered Sunset

"I should like to be a beautiful butterfly,

All blue and yellow and green and red;

But I should not like

To have Dan put camphor on my poor little head."

--Louisa May Alcott, Little Men

"'It's all right'," she said. 'It's organically grown.'"

--Lisa Alther, in Kinflicks, in a scene from Ginny's lesbian affair where vegetables are being wasted

"Grundy Golem was the size of an inconsequence."

--Piers Anthony, in Golem in the Gears, where I suppose describing Grundy as a golem is an act of inappropriate cultural appropriation, but it's a funny book

"You fit into me

like a hook into an eye

a fish hook

an open eye"

--Margaret Atwood, Collected Poems 

"There was the strangest odor of onions about the young Woodlawns...But she forgave them, because of their tears of grief."

--Carol Ryrie Brink, Magical Melons, at the end of a story where the children have been baby-sat by a relative who is not the sharpest knife in the drawer

"Jessie was not as ill-natured as she was silly."

--Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

"Irish proverbs always turn out to be insults in disguise."

--M. Grant Cormack, How the Rabbit Took a Ride

"Garnish with nuts, bolts, and old washers."

--Elizabeth Enright, Then There Were Five, scene where brother is teasing sister about her interest in cooking

"How gold's the King of Egypt?"

--Eleanor Farjeon, The Little Bookroom, in a story suggested by a news report that wheat found in an Egyptian tomb was still golden and mold-free

"If I Ever Get Back to Georgia I'm Going to Nail My Shoes to the Ground"

--Lewis Grizzard, the title of the book

"There's Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos"

--Jim Hightower, the title of the book

"Dearer to me than the evening star

A Packard car

A Hershey bar

Or a bride in her rich adorning,

Dearer than any of these by far

Is to lie in bed in the morning."

--Jean Kerr, Please Don't Eat the Daisies

"There was a boy called Eustace Clarence Scrubb, and he almost deserved it."

--C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader

"'Watch it, Linkletter,' I say to myself. 'Your hatband seems to be shrinking!'"

--Art Linkletter, in The Secret World of Kids, describing his own struggle against feeling that he was entitled to all the attention being a TV star got him. The book, which is about what Linkletter felt that he and his wife had done right with their five children, was soon withdrawn from reprinting, despite popular demand, after one of the children died by misadventure. If he were still alive I wouldn't quote it here, despite having chortled over it in middle school. He's not. I think the book's due for a reprint.

"'But Merrill,' you might say. 'Merrill, Merrill, Merrill...' Then again, you might not, because you have already exceeded your quota of opportunities to use my first name."

--Merrill Markoe, Merrill Markoe's Guide to Life

"Beauty is twice beauty...

when it is a matter of two socks in winter."

--Pablo Neruda, "Ode to My Socks," I forget whose translation

"HOP HOP We like to hop.

HOP POP We like to hop on top of Pop.

STOP.

You must not hop on Pop."

--Theodor Seuss Geisel as "Dr. Seuss," Hop on Pop, recently recalled to my mind when a certain large cat climbed onto a mound of knitted blankets and unerringly braced her weight on a paw planted directly above the hollow at the base of my throat

"When beetles fight these battles

in a bottle with their paddles

and the bottle's on a poodle

and the poodle's eating noodles..."

--T.S. Geisel, Fox in Socks

"The black side of her hair's turned white. And the white's gone green--a horrid shade."

--Dodie Smith, The Hundred and One Dalmatians, describing the final rout of Cruella de Ville

"Scrub the soap thoroughly with the washcloth, and then hang up your neck."

--Caskie Stinnett, reprinted in The Family Book of Humor, final line of an essay on the way his son's brain seemed to scramble the keywords in directions

"If men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament."

--Gloria Steinem, Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions

"And when you've finished, if any are whole,

Send them down the hall to roll!

...That's what Bilbo Baggins hates,

So carefully! carefully with the plates!"

--J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

"...and it would take the tartar off, too, and mostly the enamel with it..."

--Mark Twain, in Huckleberry Finn, where the king and the duke are describing the scams that got them chased out of various towns

"It is not often that someone...is a good friend and also a good writer. Charlotte was both."

--E.B. White, Charlotte's Web

"I've just become a Socialist...You work for the abolition of private property, and start by collaring all you can, and sitting on it."

--P.G. Wodehouse, in Mike and Psmith. This line got the author hated and slandered but he never tried to suppress the book.