"Our clayey part"

I am reading/re-reading too many books at once. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (okay, I just finished that one). Moby Dick; Dead Souls; The Mercy Seat (well, that's poetry, but I'm reading it straight through like a novel); The Sun Also Rises. Enough already. I am going to bracket everything else and focus on finishing Moby Dick. I am always inspired by Melville's language--such vigorous verbs and nouns, descriptive without being florid. Some of my favorite quotes:
"a speechlessly quick chaotic bundling of a man into eternity";
"it's a mutual, joint-stock world, in all meridians. We cannibals must help these Christians"; "Because no man can ever feel his identity aright except his eyes be closed; as if darkness were indeed the proper element of our essences, though light be more congenial to our clayey part."
My list of must-reads is obscenely long. People have to stop writing good books! At least until I finish all the old ones.