“I'm a person of the mountains and the open paddocks and the big empty sky, that's me, and I knew if I spent too long away from all that I'd die; I don't know what of, I just knew I'd die.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost
“Sometimes I think I'd rather be frightened than bored. At least when you're frightened you know you're alive.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost
“Nothing reaches inside you and grabs you by the guts the way fear does.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost
“My survival was up to me. I had nothing and I had no one. What I did have, I told myself, was my mind, my imagination, my memory, my feelings, my spirit. These were important and powerful things.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost
“I didn't confess how wrecked I was. Let them keep thinking I was Superwoman if they wanted. I knew the truth.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost
“Oh, Homer! You don't have to play dumb anymore! You're not at school now.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost
“There's no room for anything else. You forget that you're tired or cold or hungry. You forget that banged-up knee and your aching tooth. You forget the past, and you forget that there's such a thing as a future.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost
“I lay there with my mind running amuck, on the brink of madness. And somehow, gradually, early Sunday morning, I became calm. I can't think of any other word for it. I was thinking about the beach poem again, and I started to feel that I was being looked after, that everything was OK. It was strange: if there was ever a time in my life when I had the right to feel alone this was it. But I lost that sense of loneliness. I felt like there was a force in the room with me, not a person, but I had a sense that there was another world, another dimension, and it would be looking after me. It was like, "This isn't the only world, this is just one aspect of the whole thing, don't imagine this is all there is.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost
“Sometimes I got worried that my memory was falling apart.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost
“The dreams now were simply of staying alive.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost
“We weren't creatures from another planet. We were creatures from Hell.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost
“They weren't necessarily soldiers, but you didn't have to be soldiers to be affected by it all.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost
“I was deeply impressed by the fact that my life could lose three days without my having any awareness of it. Maybe this was a preview of death: continuous visions and dreams and vague glimpses of reality. Only with death you never wake up: you keep having the weird images forever.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost
“I guess you can't live at full-on intensity forever. Lying on the bed of my cell in the dark, trembling, waiting for the soldiers to come in and shoot me - you just can't keep doing that. There's something in the human spirit that won't let you live that way.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost
“I refuse to think fear. I will think strong. I will think brave.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost
“This is bigger than a fart in a bathtub, you know.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost
“Oh Ellie, doesn’t it make your mouth water?"
"It makes me water all right," I said crudely. "But not from my mouth.”
― John Marsden, quote from A Killing Frost
“I shall not waste any more words on you," she said coldly. "Your mind is too closed to hear them.”
― Robin Jarvis, quote from The Oaken Throne
“Мы, люди, не знаем, кто мы есть. Самих себя мы привыкли воспринимать в определенной «упаковке», той, которая ежедневно смотрит на нас из зеркала и которую нам угодно называть своим Я. О, нас нисколько не беспокоит то, что нам знакома лишь обёртка пакета со стандартными надписями: отправитель — родители, адресат — могила; бандероль из неизвестности в неизвестность, снабженная различными почтовыми штемпелями — «ценная» или… ну, это уж как решит наше тщеславие.”
― Gustav Meyrink, quote from The Angel of the West Window
“Nobody likes a whistler, particularly not the divinity that shapes our ends.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide
“People under time pressure don’t work better—they just work faster.”
― Tom DeMarco, quote from Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams
“Human evolution is not over, but the chances of natural selection adapting our species in dramatic, major ways to common non-infectious mismatch diseases are remote unless conditions change dramatically. One reason is that many of these diseases have little to no effect on fertility. Type 2 diabetes, for example, generally develops after people have reproduced, and even then, it is highly manageable for many years.8 Another consideration is that natural selection can act only on variations that affect reproductive success and that are also genetically passed from parent to offspring. Some obesity-related illnesses can hinder reproductive function, but these problems have strong environmental causes.9 Finally, although culture sometimes spurs selection, it is also a powerful buffer. Every year new products and therapies are being developed that allow people with common mismatch diseases to cope better with their symptoms. Whatever selection is operating is probably occurring at a pace too slow to measure in our lifetimes.”
― quote from The Story of the Human Body: Evolution, Health, and Disease
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.