I just finished reading the 5th Harry Potter book this week (Yes, Iï¿œm 28. Yes, Iï¿œm a geek. No, this shouldnï¿œt surprise anyone.), and there were a couple of parts in particular that I really loved.
Not because it was a great book, mind youï¿œitï¿œs notï¿œbut style counts for a lot in my mind. So I got to thinking about this, and realized that Iï¿œm certainly not the only one who feels that way about books, or music, or movies. I think itï¿œd be fun to share some of these favorite lyrics, paragraphs, pages, and one-liners. Iï¿œll get us started with my favorite bit from Snow Crash, by Neal Stephenson:
"Until a man is twenty-five, he still thinks, every so often, that under the right circumstances he could be the baddest motherfucker in the world. If I moved to a martial-arts monestary in China and studied real hard for ten years. If my family was wiped out by Columbian drug dealers and I swore myself to revenge. If I got a fatal disease, had one year to live, devoted it to wiping out street crime. If I just dropped out and devoted my life to being bad.
Hiro used to feel that way, too, but then he ran into Raven. In a way, this is liberating. He no longer has to worry about trying to be the baddest motherfucker in the world. The position is taken. The crowning touch, the one thing that really puts true world-class badmotherfuckerdom totally out of reach, of course, is the hydrogen bomb. If it wasn’t for the hydrogen bomb, a man could still aspire. Maybe find Raven’s Achilles’ heel. Sneak up, get a drop, slip a mickey, pull a fast one. But Raven’s nuclear umbrella kind of puts the world title out of reach.
Which is okay. Sometimes it’s all right just to be a little bad. To know your limitations. Make do with what you’ve got."
