Line(s) of the Day #CanneryRow

Early morning is a time of magic in Cannery Row. In the gray time after the light has come and before the sun has risen, the Row seems to hang suspended out of time in a silvery light. The street lights go out, and the weeds are brilliant green. The corrugated iron of the canneries glows with the pearly lucence of platinum or gold pewter. No automobiles are running then. The street is silent of progress and business. And the rush and drag of the waves can be heard as they splash in among the piles of the canneries. It is a time of great peace, a deserted time, a little era of rest.

The charming style of gifted Californian writer John Steinbeck from his acclaimed novel Cannery Row (1945). Winner of the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1962, the literary titan also wrote other masterpieces such as Of Mice and Men, The Grapes of Wrath and East of Eden.

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Line(s) of the Day #TheOldManandtheSea

Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with that there is.

As said by the elderly fisherman Santiago in the maritime novella The Old Man and the Sea (1952) by American literary giant Ernest Hemingway.  Widely considered to be one of the all-time great works, it won Hemingway a Pulitzer Prize and was instrumental in gaining him the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954.

Line(s) of the Day #TheThirdMan

I had paid my last farewell to Harry a week ago,when his coffin was lowered into the frozen February ground, so that it was with incredulity that I saw him pass by, without a sign of recognition, among the host of strangers in the Strand.

The lines of inspiration for the film that became The Third Man. In a rather unique turn of events, these lines never made it into the book, the film was set in Vienna and Graham Green’s book (never meant to be anything other than a draft to help plan the screenplay), was published after the success of the 1949 British film noir. It’s still my favourite film. Feel free to share any examples of any time you have preferred the silver screen adaptation to the original novel.

Line(s) of the Day #ShoelessJoe

Three years ago at dusk on a sunny evening, when the sky was a robin’s-egg’s blue and the wind was as soft as a day-old chick, I was sitting on the verandah of my farm home in eastern Iowa when a voice very clearly said to me, “If you build it he will come.”

As said by the story’s narrator John Kinsella in the magic realism book Shoeless Joe (1982). W.P. Kinsella’s novel, which wonderfully tells of an Iowa farmer building a farm so as to see the spirits of legendary baseball players, was famously adapted for the 1989 film Field of Dreams.

Line(s) of the Day #HarryPotterandtheChamberofSecrets

It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.

As said by Professor Dumbledore in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, the second book in the Harry Potter series by JK Rowling.