“I keep wishing you had had a better life...a different life. But a different life would have made you a different Blue." He looked at me then. "And that would be the biggest tragedy of all.”
“Someone told me once that to create true art you must be willing to bleed and let others watch.”
“Sometimes the things we want to be rescued from can save us.”
“You may not be a work of art, but you are definitely a piece of work.”
“Why don’t you focus on where you’re going and less on where you came from?”
“But there's no way to avoid regret. Don't let anybody tell you different. Regret is just life's aftertaste. No matter what you choose, you're gonna wonder if you shoulda done things different. I didn't necessarily choose wrong. I just chose. And I lived with my choice, aftertaste and all.”
“Once upon a time there was a little blackbird, pushed out of the nest, unwanted.”
“I was scarred but I was not broken. Beneath my wounds I was still whole. Beneath my insecurities, beneath my pain, beneath my struggle, beneath it all, I was still whole.”
“There's a whole lot more to most people than meets the eye, Wilson. Unfortunately, a lot of times it isn't good stuff. It's scary stuff, painful stuff. By now, you know so much scary, painful stuff about me, it's a wonder you're still around. You had me pegged pretty well right from the start, I'd say. You're wrong about one thing, though. Girls like me notice guys like you. We just don't think we deserve them.”
“I've never felt about anybody the way I feel about you," I confessed in a rush. "I can't imagine that what I'm feeling isn't love. But 'I love you' doesn't feel adequate to express it." I plunged headlong into babbling. "I desperately want you to love me. I need you to love me - but I don't want to need it, and I'm afraid that I need it too much.”
“She said 'life is all we have, and we live it as we believe in living it. But to sacrifice what you are and to live without belief, that is a fate more terrible than dying.”
“You are missing a key element to the story. Maybe the moral of the legend is that we are all carved, created, and formed by a master hand. Maybe we are all works of art.”
“The beauty of that poem is that everybody can relate, because we all feel like nobody. We all feel like we are on the outside, looking in. We all feel scattered. But I think it's that self-awareness that actually makes us somebody. And you are definitely somebody, Blue. You may not be a work of art, but you are definitely a piece of work.”
“I'm nobody, who are you? Are you nobody too?”
“Loving someone means putting their needs above your own. No matter what. Somehow, you figured that out. I'll be damned if I know how, but you did.”
“So often, I felt like my hands and heart knew something I did not, and I surrendered the art to them.”
“What we believe affects our choices, our actions, and subsequently, our lives. The Greeks believed in thier gods, and this belief affected everything else. History is written according to what men believe, whether or not it's true. As the writer of your own history, what you believe influences the paths you take. Do you believe in something that may be a myth? I'm not talking about religious beliefs, per se. I'm talking about things you've told yourself, or things you've been told for so long that you just assume that they are true.”
“You can't control who loves you...you can't let someone love you anymore than you can make someone love you”
“I can't control what you see or how you interpret what you see any more than I can control what you think of me.”
“And in weeping there was power. The power to heal, the power to release pain and let go, the power to endure love and to shoulder loss. And as the weeks became months, I cried less and smiled more. And peace became a more frequent companion.”
“If we sacrifice everything for a cause, we tend to become a spokesperson instead of a lover, an organizer instead of a wife, a mouthpiece instead of a mother.”
“I could eat a unicorn and pick my teeth with his horn! I'm absolutely famished.”
“I love the way you smile at me... knocks me on my arse.”
“There's no sense in running from the past. We can't throw it away or pretend it didn't happen, Miss Echohawk. But maybe we can learn something from it. You have an interesting story, and I'd like you to tell me more.”
“I don't have terrible taste in women. I'm mad about you, aren't I?”
“Are you?"
“Yes, Blue. I am. I am completely gone on you.”
“If we sacrifice everything for a cause, we tend to become a spokesperson instead of a lover, an organizer instead of a wife, a mouthpiece instead of a mother. I gave everything else away in the name of a greater good, but look how many people I hurt. Look at the ripple effects of thinking my life's work was more important than the people in my life.”
“Usually redemption implies rescue - being saved. What were you being saved from?' he inquired, his voice carefully neutral. 'Ugliness.”
“He had become the most relevant thing in my life. Redemption, resolution, revelation, and now relevance.”
“I know you are incredibly bright, because when you are not being a smartarse your comments in class are very insightful, and when you ARE being a smartarse you are witty and clever and you make me laugh even when I want to slap you.”
“She always says she dislikes the abnormal, it is so obvious. She says the normal is so much more simply complicated and interesting.”
“I probably just want to leave a trace of myself behind in this world.”
“Words strike the air and the mind, they act on the senses and on the soul.”
“His accent was deep Louisiana, which meant half the time he wasn't coherent and the other half he was bitching at them for not answering his questions.”
“I will write: for myself, for those who come after, and for the voices that cry out not to be forgotten.”
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.