Many a character in many of my games has used quotations as dialogue. It's an innocent pleasure.
Favourites sources are plays, poems and lyrics but I'm not fussy.
Kyleth, the Witch Queen used a lot of Jacobean tragedy and Healaugh the halfling bard quoted Sondheim. The Moonlit King got a lot of the dottier bits of Walter de la Mare. A recent slaad was cursed with badly mangled bits of WWI poetry.
It's fun for me and a quick and dirty way to establish character. Palgrave sits on my desk and I have The Quote Garden bookmarked. As I say, an innocent pleasure.
Wonderful idea Amanda. All my NPCs end up speaking in the same manner.
ReplyDeleteVery glad you found it helpful :)
DeleteI used to spend hours reading quotation books. There is a lot of wisdom there.
ReplyDeleteMe too. I have many of them and love them all, but find Quote Garden useful for cut and pasting purposes.
DeleteI had an Oxford quotations collection which I'd annotated for years. A good friend of mine borrowed it and added her own annotations, which became particularly special to me after she died of cancer.
ReplyDeleteSadly the book was destroyed in a flood a few years later.
That story leaves me just a little shakey, particularly as one of my quote books is also a bequest from a friend who died much too young.
DeleteI liked your post, Amanda, and just read B.V.'s response, above. That was a whirlwind of emotions from which I'm still recovering in seconds.
ReplyDeleteSee above for my own reaction.
DeleteBeen thinking a lot about the point at which death comes in a life. Such disparate stories, such seeming arbitrariness.
DeleteIn a sense quotations can define a person. Whenever certain people are quoted, I am immediately drawn to getting to know the person who used the quote.
ReplyDeleteThat is very true. I've stumbled on books I might otherwise have missed because I particularly liked a quote.
DeleteHi Amanda .. I use quotes occasionally in my posts - but can quite see them being used in dialogue and stories generally .. I've seen the flood destruction - we just never know do we. My uncle used to annotate books - sadly they went the way of the family .. I managed to snag one or two .. but not the ones I would have liked - still can't have everything!
ReplyDeleteI do notice quotes on blogs though .. they certainly can add to the postings .. cheers Hilary
Quotes are always cool and useful.
ReplyDeleteAren't they just :) So many ways to use them.
DeleteFun blog! :) I'll keep checking back. Yay to games and writing :)
ReplyDeleteWelcome :)
DeleteAs I get older I find myself quoting things more and more. Mainly because I work in an office full of twenty somethings and I'm knocking on the door of forty. They think I'm dead clever. I'm not really, I'm just good at remembering a pithy line! As for quotations in roleplaying, I've not come across that, but it sounds great for adding an extra dimension.
ReplyDeleteI can relate to that. I often find myself quoting without even really being aware I'm doing it any more as the quotes have just become part of my day to day vocabulary.
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