“Empty minds are abhorred by thought as vacuums are by nature.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“The safest way to live is first, inherit money, second be born without a taste for liquor, third, have a legitimate job that keeps you busy, fourth, marry a wife who will cooperate in your sexual peculiarities, fifth, join some big church, sixth, don't live too long.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“Love is about allowing. Love is about letting people be free. You leave the cage door open and if you're really loved, the bird flies back to be with you. That's the only kind of love worth having.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“Evil was a stupid word. It had the same sort of sense, largely meaningless, amorphous, diffuse, wooly, as applied to "love." Everyone had a vague idea of what it meant but none could precisely have defined it. It seemed, in a way, to imply something supernatural.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“But it was more than that. There was an indefinable ingredient, a kind of excitement. It had something to do with history and the past, that excitement, and something to do with potential as well, with what Orwell or somebody had said. that every man really knew in his heart the finest place to be was the countryside on a summer's day. I was happy, that's what it was.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“Mark Twain had written somewhere: We are all mad at night.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“Events in his own past he never thought of as evil but rather as mistaken, immensely regrettable, brought about by fear and greed.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“Time, the best of all doctors, though it kills you in the end, had done more than therapy could.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“Lewis would have agreed with Oscar Wilde that our past is what we are. We cannot rid ourselves of it.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“The wonderful thing about the human mind is the way it copes when the worst happens. Beyond that worst happening you think there can be nothing, the unimaginable has taken place, and on the other side is death, destruction, the end. But the worst happens and you reel from it, you stagger, the shock is enormous, and then you begin to recover. You rally, you stand up and face it. You get used to it.
For what had happen was not the worst, you realize that. the worst was yet to come, was perhaps always yet to come, never would actually come, because if it did, you would know it, that would be reality, and there would be nothing then but to kill yourself. Quickly.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“A disturbing experience it had been, exciting and confusing.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“We are all mad at three in the morning”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“Those who have inside their lives an empty space need to fill it with love if they can, and if they cannot, with things. And they need to please others in order that others may give them love. Those who need love with the hunger the rest of mankind keeps for food, for the necessaries of life, give their bodies simply and without reflection for a return of love, would give their soul if they knew how, are reduced to thievery of the basest kind and of the basest things because this is the easiest way.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“I am not in this world to live up to your expectations and you are not in this world to live up to mine. I am I and you are you. And if we find each other that's beautiful, if not, it can't be helped.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“Games were being played, that was all, and games of which he was largely ignorant and wished to remain so.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“Life is too short to be so circumspect.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“I think life's too long to do anything that we know is wrong before we begin.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“You do not put off things because they threaten you, because you are afraid; It was a rule of life.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“Isak Dinesen said that life is no more than a process for turning healthy young puppies into mangy old dogs and man but an exquisite instrument for converting the red wine of Shiraz into urine.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“He thought, I know what my idea of heaven would be, if by heaven we mean a place of bliss in which to pass eternity: a sanctuary where one might chain-smoke without impairment of breathing, destruction of the lungs, or damage to the heart, light each fresh cigarette from the glowing butt of its predecessor, and drink ice-free but hundred-proof chilled vodka laced with two drops of angostura and a gill of newly opened Perrier endlessly, with increasing euphoria, until a peak of joy and ease was reached but without any subsequent nausea or pain or dehydration or oblivion…”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
“When the process began, when association started an entering procedure—at, for instance, the sound of a Greek or Spanish place name, the taste of raspberries, the sight of candles out of doors—he had taught himself to touch an escape key, rather like that on the computers he sold.”
― Barbara Vine, quote from A Fatal Inversion
Barbara Vine
Born place: in The United Kingdom
Born date February 17, 1930
See more on GoodReads
“But whatever dismal appearance of things there may be in the world, we need not fear the ruin of the church by the most bloody oppositions. Former experiences will give security against future events. It is built on the rock, and those gates of hell shall not prevail against it.”
― John Owen, quote from The Glory of Christ
“You always believed we could survive in the outside world. I'm doing everything I can to give at least some of us a chance of not only surviving but truly living.”
― Anne Bishop, quote from Marked in Flesh
“As you all know first prize is a Cadillac El Dorado. Anyone wanna see second prize? Second prize is a set of steak knives. Third prize is you're fired.”
― David Mamet, quote from Glengarry Glen Ross
“غيري يكتب كما يتكلم ، و أنا أكتب كما ألتزم الصمت”
― Amin Maalouf, quote from Balthasar's Odyssey
“Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes
First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.
And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.
Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like a swimmer’s dividing water,
and slip inside.
You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.
The complexity of women’s undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.
Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything—
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.
What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.
So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset
and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that Reason is a plank,
that Life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.”
― Billy Collins, quote from Picnic, Lightning
Two for the Dough
A Book of Five Rings...
Third Grave Dead Ahe...
The Last Valentine
Four to Score
Summer of My German...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.
