Ein treng berre sei ordet for at ein sann vestlending skal få ei lita tåre i auget. Ferjer. For dette er eitt av dei magiske orda. Eitt av dei som er med på å gjere oss til vestlendingar. Vi har noko fint, tenkjer vi. Noko som dei andre ikkje har. Vi kallar det ferjer. Og mens dei smeller opp stadig nye bruer og trekker stadig fleire ferjer ut av trafikk, så blir dette stadig viktigare for oss. Dei må ikkje ta ferjene ifrå oss! Kva har vi då igjen? Sjølv om vi både tidt og ofte har forbanna ferjene og alt deira vese, når vi akkurat har mist siste ferja ein sein haustkveld, når vi kjem sist i køen og bilen framfor oss er den siste som kjem med når ferja er eit kvarter forseinka og polet akkurat er stengt når vi kjem fram.

As I write now, it occurs to me that the peculiarity of most things we think of as fragile is how tough they truly are. There were tricks we did with eggs, as children, to show how they were, in reality, tiny load-bearing marble halls; while the beat of the wings of a butterfly in the right place, we are told, can create a hurricane across an ocean. Hearts may break, but hearts are the toughest of muscles, able to pump for a lifetime, seventy times a minute, and scarcely falter along the way. Even dreams, the most delicate and intangible of things, can prove remarkable difficult to kill.

"Well, I don't mean a boner in the sexual sense," Gordy said. "I don't think you should run thhrough life with a real erect penis. But you should approach each book - you should approach life - with the real possibility that you might get a metaphorical boner at any point."

Har du pils og populærmusikk, treng du ikkje høgare utdanning, sa Ragnar.

But when it works, a well-spelled feat of magic is the most wondrous thing to behold, like your favourite book, paining, music and movie all at the same time, with chocolate and a meaningful hug from someone you love thrown in for good measure.

Det er en god følelse å ha med seg sine egne bøker når man er på fremmede steder

Han kan gå på vatnet, sjølv om det ikkje har regna på lenge.

I lay on the bed and lost myself in the stories. I liked that. Books were safer than other people anyway.

Adults follow paths. Children explore. Adults are content to walk the same way, hundreds of times, or thousands; perhaps it never occurs to adults to step off the paths, to creep beneath rhododendrons, to find the spaces between fences. I was a child, which meant that I knew a dozen different ways of getting out of our property and into the lane, ways that would not involve walking down our drive.

Men det finst andre, meir skjulte og implisitte sorteringsmekanismar enn "litterær kvalitet". eit historisk stoff må ordnast, og ein litteraturhistorikar systematiserer vanlegvis materialet i litterære epokar. Den forfattaren som i si tid står fram som nyskapande i stil, sjanger, stoff og ideologi, som bryt med, eller innleier, ein ny epoke, kvalifiserer seg dermed for fyldig behandling, medan dei som skriv i tråd med etablerte bølgjer og trendar, kan bli grupperte med kortare omtalar i oppsamlingsgrupper.

Working in fiction does give one a somewhat tenuous hold on reality, but it's not the hold that's tenuous - it's the reality: which reality, whose reality, does it matter anyway - and will there be cake."

"And was there?"

"Was there what?"

"Cake."

"Genreally speaking, yes."

Spela, det er visst det einaste hardingane har kunna; spela og dyrka frukt, det er ikkje so gale, folk kan driva med det som verre er.

Men nå har me begynt med folkedans, og eg må seie at ting går mykje betre mellom oss. For eg toler ikkje å snurre rundt. Har aldri gjort det. Karusellar gjer meg svimmel i dagevis. Og det er tydelegvis snurring det dreier seg om i folkedansen. Særleg heftig går det for seg i polsdansen, som eg og kona mi har lagt vår elsk på. Folk trur det er hallingkastet eller sparket som er det viktigaste i folkedans, men det er berre tull. Det er vanvittig kvalmande snurring, rundt og rundt, som er greia. Kona mi elskar sjølvsagt å svinge seg rundt, som kvinnfolk flest, og medan ho smiler, så brekker eg meg og smågulpar, og me blir begge to så herleg utslitne av påkjenninga at me kan unne oss både det eine og det andre etterpå.

”So this entire world we are standing on is what? A story? Not a planet at all, but a story? How can we stand on a story? How can a story have gravity, or light, or air for us to breath?”
The Doctor shrugged.
”Every good story has atmosphere.”

“If it wasn’t for the mist we could see your home across the bay," said Gatsby. "You always have a green light that burns at the end of your dock."
Daisy put her arm through his abruptly but he seemed absorbed in what he had just said. Possibly it had occurred to him that the colossal significance of that light had now vanished forever. Compared to the great distance that had separated him from Daisy it had seemed very near to him, almost touching her. It had seemed as close as a star to the moon. Now it was again a green light on a dock. His count of enchanted things had diminished by one.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter—to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther. . . . And one fine morning——

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

"You're doing a what?" she had aksed, when I mentioned the reason I was going to East Carmine.
"A chair census, my poppet," I had explained. "Head Office are worried that the chair density might have dropped below the proscribed 1.8 per person."
"How absolutely thrilling. Does an ottoman count as a chair or a very stiff cushion?"

"Her," sa eg, "her set eg oppvaskbalja." - "Hm," sa Tore, "det kan vere bra å vite det, men det kjem ikkje til å få nokon praktisk betydning."

Der var han nok framme ved den avgjerande skilnaden mellom diktarar og monster: ordlegging mot øydelegging.

Madeleine had a feeling that most semiotic theorists had been unpopular as children, often bullied or overlooked, and so had directed their lingering rage onto literature.