“Speaking of which, about assuming you had a condom—I just meant that you, with your experience, would be prepared for responsible sex, even if it were on the fly. An intelligent man is prepared for spontaneity.”
― Roberta Pearce, quote from A Bird Without Wings
“. . . I suppose one starts out, as a child, being romantic and dreaming of adventure. Poetic. Then reality comes along, and with it, a whole lot of prose.”
― Roberta Pearce, quote from A Bird Without Wings
“Didn’t being out in the storm scare you?”
“Try a couple of high-summer prairie storms in a trailer,” she mused. “That either makes you terrified of them or indifferent to them.”
― Roberta Pearce, quote from A Bird Without Wings
“My fantasy was that I was the long-lost switched-at-birth child of wealthy eccentrics. One day, they would find me and take me away from the gypsy caravan that was my life, and give me hot meals, a decent dress, and a pony.”
― Roberta Pearce, quote from A Bird Without Wings
“Yes, he scorned his family’s decadent ways, but perhaps that wasn’t so much about the money per se, but rather the wastefulness of it; the lack of energy and drive it represented, as if the Ransomes were—like that postmodern throng of the famous-for-being-famous set—some odd collection of spoiled Emperor-brats walking a red carpet without any discernible talent to clothe them. The things the Ransomes—and their once-large fortune—could have accomplished . . . they could have changed the world, or at least impacted it in positive ways.”
― Roberta Pearce, quote from A Bird Without Wings
“The frizzy and dowdy was because I had let little things in my life slide. The stuttering was because I was nervous around you.”
“Why aren't you now?”
“I don't have a crush on you anymore,” she retorted.
Silence.”
― Roberta Pearce, quote from A Bird Without Wings
“She deserved some real breaks in her life. And he intended on giving her every one he could.
Even if she stole his lunch again.
With a grin, he sat down to work.”
― Roberta Pearce, quote from A Bird Without Wings
“Isn't it great when you're a kid and the world is full of anonymous things? Everything is bright and mysterious until you know what it is called and then all the light goes out of it...Once we knew the name of it, how could we ever come to love it?...For things had true natures, and they hid behind false names, beneath the skin we gave them.”
― Colson Whitehead, quote from Apex Hides the Hurt
“Transformations
All night he ran, his body air,
But that was in another year.
Lately the answered shape of his laughter,
The shape of his smallest word, is fire.
He who is a fierce young crier
Of poems will be as tranquil as water,
Keeping, in sunset glow, the pure
Image of limitless desire;
Then enter earth and come to be,
Inch by inch, geography.”
― Stanley Kunitz, quote from The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz
“Dr. Harold Shipman, the victims were men and women, some in hospitals, some living at home, who were part of his patient roster.5 He murdered several hundred patients (the exact number will never be known)-mostly with opiates.”
― quote from The Anatomy of Evil
“Loosely translated Der schlechte Affe hasst seinen eigenen Geruch means that people are most deeply offended by moral failings that mirror their own.”
― Matt Ruff, quote from Bad Monkeys
“People fear anyone who differs from what is considered normal, and in a small town the idea of normal can be as narrow as the streets.”
― Elizabeth Chandler, quote from The Back Door of Midnight
BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.
We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.
Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.