Endurance

This weekend we are venturing into uncharted territories once again.  This Trifextra isn't so much a writing challenge; it's more of a reading challenge.  We want you to scour through your favorite pieces of literature and give us the best 33 words you can find.

Some quick guidelines:

• The writing you choose should not be your own.
• The 33 words should be lifted directly from another source (i.e. don't take 33 random words from Macbeth and shake them into a poem of your own (though that would be an awesome idea for another challenge) and don't take a sentence from the beginning of a book and another from the end--keep the original order).
• Credit your sources.
• You can't use the same 33 words as anyone else in the linkz. Skim through before posting your own.  You can use the same author and even the same title, just not the exact same words.

Ack! Do you people realize just how many books I've read in my life?  This was an impossible task, so I narrowed it down to books I've read more than once.  Lonesome Dove,  Howards End,  Mrs. Dalloway,  East of Eden, that Tolkien dude...  And then I thought of a worn red paperback that I randomly found one rainy day at the library back in 1979.  Book One of the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever, Lord Foul's Bane, by Stephen R. Donaldson.  That random book stuck with me because I felt so much like Thomas Covenant at the time.  It was also my first experience with reading a series that didn't involve the Hardy Boys.  I've repurchased copies two or three times over the years, as the previous ones disintegrate.


"...he was dreaming.  The way to endure a dream was to flow with it until it ended. He had to make that descent in order to survive. That need outweighed all other considerations."