Have you ever read a book that made you shiver, but in a good way?
While cleaning out the pictures on my phone, I found a picture I took of a page in Chris Cleave's Little Bee. Little Bee is a haunting story that can not be justified with a short summary.
This is the paragraph, which I still find indescribably beautiful (it's worth reading to the end):
"On the girl's brown legs there were many small white scars. I was thinking, Do those scars cover the whole of you, like the stars and the moons on your dress? I thought that would be pretty too, and I ask you right here to please to agree with me that a scar is never ugly. That is what the scar makers want us to think. But you and I, we must make an agreement to defy them. We must see all scars as beauty. Okay? This will be our secret. Because take it from me, a scar does not form on the dying. A scar means, I survived."
Truly, that paragraph still blows me away, and I've read it countless times.
Cleave's ability to maintain Little Bee's stoic, honest voice is impressive. The line "a scar means, I survived" is one of my favorite lines of all time.
Tell us: What are your favorite lines from literature?
-SM