Wednesday, July 11, 2012

Chris' fave book passage

Okay, last post.  Mom has inspired me with her passage from the Kingkiller Chronicles.  This is one of my favorite all-time paragraphs in any book ever.  It is from Thomas Harris' classic The Silence of the Lambs.  This passage sums up Harris' writing completely, that is to say, pulp bordering on high literature.  For all you who love crime drama/procedurals ala Patterson and Cornwell,  I urge you to read all of Thomas Harris' stuff.  They are all magnificent and what other crime writers aspire to.  This passage may not be 100% as I am quoting it by memory but it is very, very close:

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     Far beneath the rusty Baltimore dawn, stirrings in the maximum security ward.  Down where it is never dark the the tormented sense beginning day as oysters in a barrel open to their lost tide.  God's creatures who cried themselves to sleep stirred to cry again, and the ravers cleared their throats.

"and the ravers cleared their throats", god i love that, it slays me

1 comment:

  1. I may have to re-read Silence of the Lambs now, it has been probably a decade since I read it. Love that passage.

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