Column Chronicles: Famous novel lines before editing

Famous novel lines before editing

Frank Cotolo
August 25, 2022

It is said that great novels are not written, they are rewritten. So it is that we have uncovered some of the lines in famous novels that were edited - thankfully - because someone thought they sucked and was correct.

FRANKENSTEIN - Mary Shelley
Beware; for I am fearless and therefore powerful enough to crush your clavicle and other such parts of you.

THE GRAPES OF WRATH - John Steinbeck
Seems to me we don't never come to nothin' or nothin' don't never come to us. That's what it seems to me, at least, Not to no one else. Just me. Alone here with nothin' at all, like what doesn't come to us.

LITTLE WOMEN - Louisa May Alcott
I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to hide from them, especially when on a ship, no less on sinking.

ANNA KARENINA
All happy families are alike; they even look alike and sound alike. Unhappy families, on the other hand, aren't anything alike, not at all in fact, that may be why they are unhappy.

CATCHER IN THE RYY – J.D. Salinger
Don't ever tell anybody anything, and that goes for me, too, because then you mistrust everybody, even those you didn't tell anything to.

A FAREWELL TO ARMS - Ernest Hemingway
The world is broken and so are so many places after the breaking of the world and the men who become strong and have courage to break like the world and those who break that are already broken and meek and never prepared to break.

MOBY DICK - Herman Melville
Call me Ishkabibble. No, call me Ishy. No, call me Ishtanbul. Wait, that's a place. Call me irresponsible, guess I'm unreliable. Wait, make it simple, call me Ishmael. Yeah.

THE COLOR PURPLE - Alice Walker
Time moves slowly, but passes no matter how slowly or how creepy or how time is thought to pass. Then, they beat us with sticks.

Frank Cotolo can be found hosting the talk and interview programme Cotolo Chronicles. You can send him an e-mail at this address: frank@148.ca.