Ten of the best quotable novels

Alex Clark formerly wrote for the Observer Magazine.

One entry on her list of the ten best quotable novels, as shared at the Guardian:

Ulysses
James Joyce, 1922

What does Leopold Bloom like for his breakfast? The inner organs of beasts and fowls, Joyce tells us, but most of all “grilled mutton kidneys which gave to his palate a fine tang of faintly scented urine”; elsewhere we hear of the sea, “snotgreen” and “scrotumtightening”, and of “stately, plump” Buck Mulligan, who “came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him on the mild morning air.” But of all Joyce’s exuberant and unfettered wordplay, the best-known lines are Molly Bloom’s “yes I said yes I will Yes”.

Read about another title on the list.

Ulysses is on Kevin Jackson's list of five great books from 1922, Tom McCarthy's list of six favorite books about nothing, Alice-Azania Jarvis's reading list on grammar, George Vecsey's list of six favorite books, Nina MacLaughlin's top ten list of dirty old (literary) men, John Mullan's lists of the ten of the best parodies, ten of the best Hamlets in literature, ten of the best visits to the lavatory, and ten of the best vegetables in literature. It appears on Frank Delaney's top ten list of Irish novels and five best list of books about Ireland.

--Marshal Zeringue