3 of the most impactful lines I have read in books

As most others probably do, when I consume any kind of media and try to decide whether it is something thoroughly enjoy or not it usually comes down to how memorable the lines are. The memorability of a line will of course differ from person to person because it depends on factors such as relatability, so what I deem to be a memorable line may of course not be what others deem to be so. I will preface though that sometimes a line can be memorable even if one cannot relate to the experience it speaks to as long as the work is being approached from a lens of empathy – and also, some moments or lines simply speak to a universal human experience so relatability is not necessary for how memorable something is. So, here are my picks for the 3 most impactful lines:

Disclaimer: spoilers!

Human Acts – Han Kang:

“You’re not like me, Seong-hee. You believe in a divine being, and in this thing we call humanity.”

Human acts was a tough read for me in a completely positive way. The book recounts the effects that the death of one boy during a dark time in South Korea’s history, the Gwangju Uprising, has on multiple people who pass by his death: those close and those distant. It is important to note that although the book is written around this character, Dong-Ho, Kang wants the reader to know that he is just like everyone else, that there are thousands more just like him who have died and hundreds for every one of those thousand who are then impacted by that death. The book is so hard to read because while the prose is at times dreamlike, she presents a stark, bleak reality. Her descriptions are so haunting and realistic that they have a visceral effect upon reading them – you are at once disgusted and saddened and at awe of the cruelty humans are able to not just perpetrate but endure. But while you hold the book open and peer into this moment in history and witness the brutality presented before you, Kang never forgets the humanity present here. And this line best represents that, because in a way, Seong-Hee is like many of the readers before encountering the book or this period in history.

There are long sections in the novel written in second person, the most poignant to me was, “You are aware that, as an individual, you have the capacity for neither bravery nor strength”, which I found very damning because as I read this book and became more outraged at a government’s ability to cause such detriment to its people, the book stopped and told me o recognise that this anger alone has no impact, it is not bravery nor is it the strength to stand up to injustice, it is simply anger in hindsight. And so as we, the reader, go further into the novel this useless anger and sympathy rises and rises and we think, how is it possible that this could happen, that nothing was done to prevent it? Could it be prevented if such a thing was to reoccur (the current socio-political environment would argue no)? Before we read this book and are confronted with the horrors of political injustice, the physical violence and terror of death and fear, we may have believed in a divine being, in ‘humanity’. But upon facing the pain of these characters, in some moments so strongly that it feels tangible, we begin to wonder if humanity exists, and if it does why is it not universal? Why is it not enough to protect innocent people like a 15 year old boy who had been out with his friend? How can we make it enough? Han Kang does a wonderful job of not just saying: here is an awful moment in time, grieve it and hope it never happens again; she tells us to recognise that individually we have a duty to make sure it never happens again and she does so by forcing us to come face to face with the consequences. To read Human Acts is not enough, while perhaps alone as individuals we do not have bravery or strength, as a community, we do. With said communities we can believe in humanity even after destruction.

East of Eden – John Steinbeck

“Timshel – thou mayest”

There is so much love for East of Eden already that to drone on about its feats is to regurgitate what many others have already done. There is also so much from the book that I could pick out and dissect here but ‘thou mayest’, while not my favourite passage of the book, is definitely the most impactful. When I read or watch stories about abhorrent figures in history who have committed vile acts, I find myself constantly wondering whether there are some people who are born bad. And if so, I struggled to grapple with the fairness of that in terms of the universe because I couldn’t understand why a person’s life should or could be decided at birth. Sometimes, I settle on the fact that no one is born bad, they are just a product of their environment, but then I would see videos which detail that there are fundamental differences in the brain of a person who is likely to commit horrifying acts, such as murder, compared to a ‘normal’ person and I would waver. Maybe some people really are born bad then? And what of people raised in nurturing environments, who still end up as horrible people? What explains their immorality? Are they just born that way, and do we need to accept that?

The most enjoyable thing about East of Eden for me was a very detailed exploration into this very question. Every character is fully fleshed out and serves as an imperative tool to this question. Cal and Aaron are twins born to two unquestionably immoral characters; a father (Charles) who, among many other transgressions, almost beat his brother to death when they were boys and a selfish mother (Cathy) who lies, cheats and harms everyone she comes across for her own gain. Their father’s brother (Adam) brings Cathy home after finding her in bad shape and tells Charles that he is in love with her and wants her to be his wife, but Charles detects factitiousness in her because he seems to recognise that they share a quality of immorality and wickedness. After Adam marries Cathy, she sleeps with Charles. From Cathy’s end, it seems to me a strategic move to get Charles to stop trying to discourage Adam from being with her because she needs him; a safe place and person to stay with to escape her past. By sleeping with Charles, she makes him complicit as this moment of (emotional?) violence against his brother is one he can never admit to or leverage against Cathy to prove to Adam he is right. Soon after, Adam and Cathy leave for California and she finds she is pregnant so to prevent too much suspicion, she sleeps with Adam in a bid to make him believe the children are his. Soon after giving birth, she leaves him – and the children – in a brutal way. So, while both Cal and Aaron are biologically the children of Charles and Cathy, they are brought up as sons of Adam.

And so, the cycle repeats. There are now two new brothers: Cal and Adam, the former who has a tendency for wickedness and the latter who supposedly is more virtuous (but this can be debated). Cal often compares himself to his brother and cannot understand why he has a propensity for ‘evil’, he does not want to do bad things and doesn’t know why he does them. This inner turmoil about his innate ‘immorality’ in comparison with his righteous brother is only heightened when he learns the nature of his mother as he begins to wonder whether he can never be good or pure because he has inherited this cruelty from her. In the end, Cal causes more devastation (indirectly, as he could not predict the total consequences of his actions) and the magnitude of his wrongdoing overwhelms him when his father is on his deathbed and he has not confessed his truth. He will believe for the rest of his life that there is no helping the wickedness of his nature – he simply has to live with it. Until Lee (the man who raised the twins while Adam was lost in the aftermath of Cathy) asks Adam to forgive Cal of an act he committed in anger, an act he was overridden with guilt and shame by and in his final moments, when speaking would have been an impossible burden, he proclaims ‘Timshel’, thou mayest. You may be good if you wish, you may be evil if you wish, but everything comes down to your choices.

Even writing this now, I am overcome by sadness and hope for Cal. That he can free himself, not of the guilt of his bad actions, but of the notion that those actions are all he is comprised of. That there is more to him, as there is more to all of us, than the negative things we might do or the mistakes we make. In the end, our lives will be ones that either produced goodness or did not, but we dictate those things. Our environments can shape us, but we ultimately make the final, conscious decisions that we do.

Blue Sisters – Coco Mellors

“A lot was written about romantic love, Avery thought, about the profundity of that embrace. But this, too, was deserving of rapture, of song. Before she ever knew a lover’s body, she knew her sisters’, could see herself in their long feet and light eyes, their sleek limbs and curled ears. And, before life became big and difficult, there were moments with them when it was simply good: an early morning, still dark out, their parents asleep. Her younger sisters arriving one by one at her bedside, hair tangled, exuding their sour and sweet morning musk. She’d lifted the covers for each of them, letting them crowd into her bottom bunk, bodies pressed tight against one another, and they’d fallen asleep again like that, dropping off like puppies curled around a mother’s warm belly. She’d slept, too, safe in the center of her sisters, not knowing or needing to know where she ended and the next began. Squeezed beside Bonnie and Lucky now, it was superfluous to describe what she felt for them as love. They were love, beautiful and unbearable and hers.”

This one, admittedly, is much more personal but probably relatable to any girl or woman with a sister, or in my case, many. It is also not just a line, but an entire paragraph. I felt it was important to include it in its entirety because there’s not a single line that encompasses this experience as well as the paragraph does as a whole. That is, the experience of sisterhood. It is so central to identity – (for me) it changes how I interact with people outside of the home and informs my self-hood. I find myself angry in one second having to do something for them, and crying alone in the next moment – ashamed at my anger. I have older sisters, and many younger ones so I know both what it is like to look up to and be the one being looked up to. I have experienced the paragraph detailed by Mellors down to a tee. I had been the one to walk into my sisters room, she had been the one to lift the blanket and soon enough three more of my younger sisters had walked in and we had lined ourselves up like sardines to fit on the bed. There is something special about sisterhood because at times, there is an inexplicable rage that you don’t really feel towards others, but with that is an intense empathy and an even more intense love that encompasses it all. The feeling of sleeping besides them is comforting in the way being embraced by your mother or father can be – it is warm and sometimes sweaty and there is so much lightness that comes with it.

While the other two quotes I’ve picked out were impactful because they make me confront or realise something in a way I never have before, this was impactful because I saw the total universality of the experience of sisterhood, which struck me and stays with me until now.

There are a plethora of other lines I could have used but to limit this article to a readable length, I have chosen only 3 pieces that I encountered within the last few years. I am excited to know if you have read any of these books or if you have a really memorable line that you’d like to share, so feel free to do so below!