“The Crone tires quickly and reaches out for the velvet draperies, sits on the divan, breathing heavily. She's too ancient to have a name any longer. When she coughs you can hear the ages rattling inside her shrunken frame. No human names can cling to her any more- they slip from her dusty shriveled flesh like a young girl's whimsies.”
― Tom Piccirilli, quote from A Choir of Ill Children
“Ghosts will forever put in appearances, as they should. Our illusions have muscle and meaning. The past returns at midnight, in the heart of our dreams, and the rains and the willows forever remind us of the sacrifices we’ve offered and those we have yet to make.”
― Tom Piccirilli, quote from A Choir of Ill Children
“It will finish badly when she dries out, I suppose, and probably end with madness, but almost everything does.”
― Tom Piccirilli, quote from A Choir of Ill Children
“He was a realist with too much fervor and not enough reverie. He always remained pragmatic in a place that had too much use for superstition. That’s enough to ruin any man.”
― Tom Piccirilli, quote from A Choir of Ill Children
“It seems that the people who question me the most are the ones who’ve committed the most outlandish or atrocious acts.”
― Tom Piccirilli, quote from A Choir of Ill Children
“He doesn’t hate you, Thomas, he admires you. And we’re often frightened and jealous of what we admire.”
― Tom Piccirilli, quote from A Choir of Ill Children
“Evil, as considered in these cases, is a lack of choice.”
― Tom Piccirilli, quote from A Choir of Ill Children
“why she did not trade Dodi to anyone but me, and why I didn’t dig screw worms out of anybody”
― Tom Piccirilli, quote from A Choir of Ill Children
“The past can come back in a lot of different ways, chile. It don’t get old and wind up buried like people do. It can die and be reborn. Sins take on shape and peck at your face.”
― Tom Piccirilli, quote from A Choir of Ill Children
“LOVE IS ONLY LUST DRESSED UP FOR CHURCH.”
― Tom Piccirilli, quote from A Choir of Ill Children
“They walk the wire across the chasms of their own souls, looking down into the great depths as, step by step, they cross to the distant side. On occasion they’ve learned something by the time they get there, but not always, and usually not what they expect.”
― Tom Piccirilli, quote from A Choir of Ill Children
“Just like a man,” she says. “Does not know how to be silent, thinks we always want to hear what he has to say, always talking talking talking, interrupting his betters.”
― Naomi Alderman, quote from The Power
“Inside my chest, my lungs are wild animals, clawing at the cage.
"Oh, man," Autumn mumbles from beside me. "His smile makes me stupid."
Her words are a dim echo of my own thoughts: His smile ruins me. The feeling makes me uneasy, a dramatic lurch that tells me I need to have him or I won't be okay.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Autoboyography
“Doc was more than first citizen of Cannery Row.
He was healer of the wounded soul and the cut finger.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from Sweet Thursday
“Neither the heart cut by a sliver of glass in a wasteland of thorns, nor the atrocious waters seen in the corners of certain houses, waters like eyelids and eyes, could hold your waist in my hands when my heart lifts its oak trees toward your unbreakable thread of snow. Night sugar, spirit of crowns, redeemed human blood, your kisses banish me, and a surge of water with remnants of the sea strikes the silences that wait for you surrounding the worn-out chairs, wearing doors away.”
― Pablo Neruda, quote from Residence on Earth
“Somewhere, things must be beautiful and vivid. Somewhere else, life has to be beautiful and vivid and rich. Not like this muted palette -a pale blue bedroom, washed out sunny sky, dull green yellow brown of the fields. Here, I know ever twist of every road, every blade of grass, every face in this town, and I am suffocating.”
― Lisa Ann Sandell, quote from A Map of the Known World
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.
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