Lines from Joyce's Ulysses?

June 16, 2009 3:47 PM

What are some juicy lines of dialogue from James Joyce's Ulysses? I want to greet my friend in a Ulyssean fashion for a Bloomsday celebration later.

So I'm going down to a Bloomsday celebration tonight at Clancy's Pub in Long Beach, with a friend of mine who is crazy about Ulysses. This will be my second Bloomsday celebration that I"ll be aware of, and sadly I still have not read Joyce's epic. Considering the sheer length of the book, I figure there have to be dozens of really juicy one-liners delivered by the narrator, or even better, by characters, that I can memorize by the time my friend comes over, so I can surprise him with a quote in a rich Irish brogue. Lines displaying a rich dollop of Irish culture and language, as well as Joycean humor, perhaps?

Please, give me your best and favorite lines from James Joyce's Ulysses.

posted by malapropist to writing & language (18 comments total)

Choose a few. . .
posted by Danf at 3:59 PM on June 16

Um, this doesn't really answer your question, but I'd recommend not doing this. What exactly are you hoping to achieve? Ulysses isn't really a Pogues-and-Celtic-crosses kind of book, and people who are passionate about it are unlikely to be impressed by you boiling it down to pithy quips.
posted by nasreddin at 4:01 PM on June 16 [3 favorites]

yes I said yes I will Yes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molly_Bloom%27s_Soliloquy
posted by at at 4:02 PM on June 16

Clancy's Pub at Broadway and Alamitos?

Given the venue, "I was blue mouldy for the want of that pint. Declare to God I could hear it hit the pit of my stomach with a click."

The most famous bit is probably Molly's Bloom's soliloquy, but unless you know your friend intimately, I dunno:

… and how he kissed me under the Moorish wall and I thought well as well him as another and then I asked him with my eyes to ask again yes and then he asked me would I yes to say yes my mountain flower and first I put my arms around him yes and drew him down to me so he could feel my breasts all perfume yes and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.

I suppose if he asks to buy you a pint you might be able to rework that.

More here.
posted by notyou at 4:03 PM on June 16

Stick with the first line: "Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed."

Speaking as someone who's read the big U, there's a fair chance that even if he has read more than the first few pages, he may not remember it.

Also "narrator" in Ulysses is a really tricky concept, so I'd stick to maybe talking about the narration, more than the narrator, if you don't want to look Joyce-foolish.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 4:06 PM on June 16

One-liners? Tricky, really. You could go with the old mainstays -- "History is a nightmare from which I am trying to awake" -- but Stephen Dedalus is not really what you're looking for here, because he's semi-detached from Irish culture. As is Bloom, for that matter.

For a section that's very much meant to be read, 'Cyclops' comes to mind, not least for its gloriously blasphemous conclusion.

(Of course, if you live in an upstairs apartment with a push-button telecom thing, you could always do "Come up Kinch, come up you fearful jesuit" when your friend arrives. Buck Mulligan is very quotable.)
posted by holgate at 4:09 PM on June 16

Tell him you're feeling a bit peckish and have a craving for some grilled mutton kidneys.
posted by milarepa at 4:10 PM on June 16

My favorite one-liner in Ulysses comes from the riotously funny (and scathing) Cyclops chapter (on preview: jinx, holgate!), but it actually requires the set-up to truly be funny:

—How's Willy Murray those times, Alf?
—I don't know, says Alf I saw him just now in Capel street with Paddy Dignam. Only I was running after that ....
—You what? says Joe, throwing down the letters. With who?
—With Dignam, says Alf.
—Is it Paddy? says Joe.
—Yes, says Alf. Why?
—Don't you know he's dead? says Joe.
—Paddy Dignam dead! says Alf.
—Ay, says Joe.
—Sure I'm after seeing him not five minutes ago, says Alf, as plain as a pikestaff.
—Who's dead? says Bob Doran.
—You saw his ghost then, says Joe, God between us and harm.
—What? says Alf. Good Christ, only five .... What? ... And Willy Murray with him, the two of them there near whatdoyoucallhim's .... What? Dignam dead?
—What about Dignam? says Bob Doran. Who's talking about ...?
—Dead! says Alf. He's no more dead than you are.
—Maybe so, says Joe. They took the liberty of burying him this morning anyhow.

(FYI: Paddy Dignam is indeed dead, and Leopold Bloom has attended his funeral earlier in the day before arriving at the pub where the Cyclops episode takes place.)
posted by scody at 4:11 PM on June 16

Oh, and you can raise a pint of Guinness and declare that you are lifting "a crystal cup full of the foamy ebon ale which the noble twin brothers Bungiveagh and Bungardilaun brew ever in their divine alevats, cunning as the sons of deathless Leda."
posted by scody at 4:15 PM on June 16

refer to anything green as 'snot green', a hideously evocative phrase.
posted by a womble is an active kind of sloth at 4:22 PM on June 16 [1 favorite]

And yes, I meant to second the comment that Ulysses does not have a narrator in the conventional sense, which may be useful in helping you enjoy the readings tonight. Each episode has a different point of view (sometimes multiple points of view) and a different narrative style -- this is one of the things that allowed Joyce to do such radical things. (For example, the Proteus episode is Stephen Dedalus's internal stream-of-consciousness monologue; Cyclops is narrated by an unnamed pub patron [though the narrative frequently slips in and out of a send-up of overblown Irish nationalist heroic poetry]; Circe is written as a play script of a night in the underworld; Penelope is Molly's famed soliloquy.)

God, this is making me totally sad that I don't have any plans for tonight except to go to my chiropractor.
posted by scody at 4:33 PM on June 16

well, its not really a line but the last phrase of the book, yes I said yes I will yes, is fantastic.

Also, from episode 12 - the circe episode, when a prostitute sits on blooms face and farts.
posted by Lutoslawski at 4:36 PM on June 16

Love loves to love love. Nurse loves the new chemist. Constable 14A loves Mary Kelly. Gerty MacDowell loves the boy that has the bicycle. M. B. loves a fair gentleman. Li Chi Han lovey up kissy Cha Pu Chow. Jumbo, the elephant, loves Alice, the elephant. Old Mr Verschoyle with the ear trumpet loves old Mrs Verschoyle with the turnedin eye. The man in the brown macintosh loves a lady who is dead. His Majesty the King loves Her Majesty the Queen. Mrs Norman W. Tupper loves officer Taylor. You love a certain person. And this person loves that other person because everybody loves somebody but God loves everybody.
posted by benzenedream at 5:13 PM on June 16 [1 favorite]

Beg your pardon for not answering your query from U, but I would choose from The Dead: Michael Fury, Gabriel, the snow softly falling and falling softly. The nihilistic parallels to the Annunciation are stunning. Waiting for a friend to arrive for conversation and a pint would be a great parallel.
posted by effluvia at 5:49 PM on June 16

My two favorites are "Three quarks for Muster Mark!" and "Speak to us of emailia," which an old friend of mine used to use for the mailto link on his website.
posted by jquinby at 5:50 PM on June 16

There's always the Ballad of Joking Jesus. It has a wonderful, bouncy rhythm that would make it fun to recite while out drinking. Beware, though: many people find it outrageously offensive. You sort of have to know who you're talking to before you throw it out there. Although some of it appears in Ulysses, Joyce didn't write it. The author is the friend of Joyce who was the inspiration for Mulligan.

Have fun!
posted by TEA at 6:28 PM on June 16

refer to anything green as 'snot green', a hideously evocative phrase.
Or "scrotum tightening", for that matter.
posted by Miss Otis' Egrets at 9:50 PM on June 16

Thanks guys! He loved the quote. Oh, and thanks danf and nasreddin for not answering my question. Appreciated that.

At least you didn't tell me to divorce my spouse in a question about cats.
posted by malapropist at 12:48 AM on June 17