What's Your Favorite Book?

This week's post will be a naked attempt to start a discussion (or at least generate comments).  In the sermon on Sunday I mentioned that my favorite book was A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving.  I recommend it to anyone.  I read the first line, which I love.  But that's not my favorite passage.  In the film adaptation of Michael Chabon’s Wonder Boys, Michael Douglas, a writer, says of his lover, “She was a junkie for the printed word. Lucky for me, I manufactured her drug of choice.” So, what is your favorite non-Biblical English-language passage of reasonable length…your drug of choice? Mine comes from Chabon’s The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and it is the final paragraph of the novel. For a bit of context, the novel’s narrator has just experienced the summer in which he feels he has grown up:

"When I remember that dizzy summer, that dull, stupid, lovely, dire summer, it seems that in those days I ate my lunches, smelled another’s skin, noticed a shade of yellow, even simply sat, with greater lust and hopefulness — and that I lusted with greater faith, hoped with greater abandon. The people I loved were celebrities, surrounded by rumor and fanfare; the places I sat with them, movie lots and monuments. No doubt all of this is not true remembrance but the ruinous work of nostalgia, which obliterates the past, and no doubt, as usual, I have exaggerated everything."

In the comments, post your favorite passage, or simply the title of your favorite book, with a bit of context as necessary. I can’t wait to read them.