Mark Dunn · 208 pages
Rating: (23.1K votes)
“Perhaps in time, Ella, the words we have lost will fade, and we will all stop summoning them by habit, only to stamp them out like unwanted toadstools when they appear. Perhaps they will eventually disappear altogether, and the accompanying halts and stammers as well: those troublesome, maddening pauses that at present invade and punctuate through caesura all manner of discourse. Trying so desperately we all are, to be ever so careful.”
― Mark Dunn, quote from Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
“Lately, I haph startet painting my torso in pretty, motley hews. I sit in phront oph the mirror in the sleepy-room. I atmire my hantyworg. I am a hooman apstrat paining.”
― Mark Dunn, quote from Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
“On Wednesday, July 19, the Council, having gleaned and discerned, released its official verdict: the fall of the tile bearing the letter "Z" constitutes the terrestrial manifestation of an empyrean Nollopian desire, that desire most surely being that the letter "Z" should be utterly excised--fully extirpated--absolutively heave-ho'ed from our communal vocabulary!”
― Mark Dunn, quote from Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
“Would you mind doing this last thing for me? Pack my box with fivedozen liquor jugs?”
― Mark Dunn, quote from Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
“Love one another, push the perimeter of this glorious language. Lastly, please show proper courtesy; open not your neighbor's mail.”
― Mark Dunn, quote from Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
“Hundreds of words await ostracism from our functional vocabularies: waltz and fizz and squeeze and booze and frozen pizza pie, frizzy and fuzzy and dizzy and duzzy, the visualization of emphyzeema-zapped Tarzans, wheezing and sneezing, holding glazed and anodized bazookas, seized by all the bizarrities of this zany zone we call home. Dazed or zombified citizens who recognize hazardous organizations of zealots in their hazy midst, too late - too late to size down. Immobilized we iz. Minimalized. Paralyzed. Zip Zap. ZZZZZZZZZ.
Crazy.
Crazy.
Did I say crazy?”
― Mark Dunn, quote from Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
“U" is gone. I suppose you're aware. The 1st aeiouy to go. Up until now the other graphemes were not aeiouys. When the aeiouys start to go, Ella, writing to you turns exponentially more grueling. I will not throw in the towel, though. I trust that you won't either. I truly relish our partnership.”
― Mark Dunn, quote from Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
“We appreciate your coming to us with a copy of your letter to your sister, but it was unnecessary. Your offense was known to us even before the letter's receipt by your sister. Effective as of September 15 the primary responsibility of our isle's new assistant chief postal inspector has been to scan all post for use of illegal letters of the alphabet, then to make nightly reports to the Council. A report has been put on file on your behalf, your official sentence to be forthwith in issuance.”
― Mark Dunn, quote from Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
“The Council is wrong. Yet, observe that none of us will risk telling it so, for fear of the consequences.”
― Mark Dunn, quote from Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
“Instead of the calendrical terms Monday, Tuesday and so forth, we cheerfully offer the following surrogates. Use them freely and often, for their use honors us all. For Sunday, please use Sunshine. For Monday. pleasy use Monty. For Tuesday, please use Toes. For Wednesday, please use Wetty. For Thursday, please use Thurby. For Friday, please use Fribs. For Saturday, please use Satto-gatto.”
― Mark Dunn, quote from Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
“His countenance, dear Ellakins, is no strain upon young female eyes!”
― Mark Dunn, quote from Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
“Today we queried, questioned, and inquired. Promise me that come tomorrow, we will not stop asking why.”
― Mark Dunn, quote from Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
“[Slipped beneath the minnow Pea front door]
Nollopton
Monty No-way 6
Insane woman named Ella:
Retreat is what we want. Go away. Let we alone.
Anonymess”
― Mark Dunn, quote from Ella Minnow Pea: A Novel in Letters
“There are ties that bind more complex than blood.”
― Jacqueline Carey, quote from Kushiel's Avatar
“Sniffer of carrion, premature gravedigger, seeker of the nest of evil in the bosom of a good word, you, who sleep at our vigil and fast for our feast, you with your dislocated reason, have cutely foretold, a jophet in your own absence, by blind poring upon your many scalds and burns and blisters, impetiginous sore and pustules, by the auspices of that raven cloud, your shade, and by the auguries of rooks in parlament, death with every disaster, the dynamatisation of colleagues, the reducing of records to ashes, the levelling of all customs by blazes, the return of a lot of sweetempered gunpowdered didst unto dudst but it never stphruck your mudhead's obtundity (O hell, here comes our funeral! O pest, I'll miss the post!) that the more carrots you chop, the more turnips you slit, the more murphies you peel, the more onions you cry over, the more bullbeef you butch, the more mutton you crackerhack, the more potherbs you pound, the fiercer the fire and the longer your spoon and the harder you gruel with more grease to your elbow the merrier fumes your new Irish stew.”
― James Joyce, quote from Finnegans Wake
“Love can't be forced into existence,(...)It won't come simply because you will it to happen”
― Judith McNaught, quote from Once and Always
“The thing about rugby is this: You can hate a guy off the pitch who will save your fucking balls on the pitch when you play on the same side. There is nothing more glorious that that.”
― Andrew Smith, quote from Winger
“This may be my only chance to see humans before these two are made into fertilizer for Moonwind's rosebushes.”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from The Realms of the Gods
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