Quotes from A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story

“One step at a time, one day at a time, just today, just this day to get through.”
― Linda Sue Park, quote from A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story

“Reading for writers is like training for athletes.”
― Linda Sue Park, quote from A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story

“If he were older and stronger, would he have given water to those men? Or would he, like most of the group, have kept his water for himself?”
― Linda Sue Park, quote from A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story

“He was floating with his head down, blood streaming from a bullet hole in the back of his neck.”
― Linda Sue Park, quote from A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story

“One step at a time . . . one day at a time. Just today—just this day to get through . . .”
― Linda Sue Park, quote from A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story

“Salva shouldered his way through the crowd until he was standing in front of the list. He raised his head slowly and began reading through the names. There it was. Salva Dut—Rochester, New York. Salva was going to New York. He was going to America!”
― Linda Sue Park, quote from A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story

“Her sickness came from the water,” the nurse explained. “She should drink only good clean water. If the water is dirty, you should boil it for a count of two hundred before she drinks”
― Linda Sue Park, quote from A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story

“More than twelve hundred boys arrived safely. It took them a year and a half.”
― Linda Sue Park, quote from A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story

“The bag sprang a leak. The leak had to be patched. The patch sprang a leak. The crew patched the patch. Then the bag sprang another leak. The drilling could not go on.”
― Linda Sue Park, quote from A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story

“They patched the bag again. The drilling went on.”
― Linda Sue Park, quote from A Long Walk to Water: Based on a True Story

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“...I continued to sit there hour after hour watching the unrelenting rain slosh against the glass, thinking of our life together, Lotte's and mine, how everything in it was designed to give a sense of permanence, the chair against the wall that was there when we went to sleep and there again when we awoke, the little habits that quoted from the day before and predicted the day to come, though in truth it was all just an illusion, just as solid matter is an illusion, just as our bodies are an illusion, pretending to be one thing when really they are millions upon millions of atoms coming and going, some arriving while others are leaving us forever, as if each of us were only a great train station, only not even that since at least in a train station the stones and the tracks and the glass roof stay still while everything else rushes through it, no, it was worse than that, more like a giant empty field where every day a circus erected and dismantled itself, the whole thing from top to bottom, but never the same circus, so what hope did we really have of ever making sense of ourselves, let alone one another?”
― Nicole Krauss, quote from Great House

“I’m not what you want, Sylvie, I get that because it’s the same for you as it is for me. I’m not what you want ‘cause I’m what you need.”
― Kristen Ashley, quote from Creed

“Hey - Duggie! Duggie! Duggie!" He came running up to me, sparkler in hand. I felt like sticking one on him, the cheeky bastard. Nobody called me Duggie.
He held the sparkler up in front of my face and said, "Wait. Wait."
I was already waiting. What else was there to do?
"Here you are," he said. "Look! What's this?"
At that precise moment, his sparkler fizzled out. I didn't say anything, so he supplied the answer himself. "The death of the socialist dream," he said.
He giggled like a little maniac, and stared at me for a second or two before running off, and in that time I saw exactly the same thing I'd seen in Stubbs's eyes the day before. The same triumphalism, the same excitement, not because something new was being created, but because something was being destroyed. I thought about Phillip and his stupid rock symphony and I swear that my eyes pricked with tears. This ludicrous attempt to squeeze the history of the countless millennia into half an hour's worth of crappy riffs and chord changes suddenly seemed no more Quixotic than all the things my dad and his colleagues had been working towards for so long. A national health service, free to everyone who needed it. Redistribution of wealth through taxation. Equality of opportunity. Beautiful ideas, Dad, noble aspirations, just as there was the kernel of something beautiful in Philip's musical hodge-podge. But it was never going to happen. If there had ever been a time when it might have happened, that time was slipping away. The moment had passed. Goodbye to all that.
Easy to be clever with hindsight, I know, but I was right, wasn't I? Look back on that night from the perspective of now, the closing weeks of the closing century of our second millennium - if the calendar of some esoteric and fast-disappearing religious sect counts for anything any more - and you have to admit that I was right. And so was Benjamin's brother, the little bastard, with his sparkler and his horrible grin and that nasty gleam of incipient victory in his twelve-year-old eyes. Goodbye to all that, he was saying. He'd worked it out already. He knew what the future held in store.”
― Jonathan Coe, quote from The Rotters' Club

“One did not turn down an invitation from Saint Cloud. At least, one didn't if one wanted to continue living contentedly in Paris. Vampires took offense so easily - and Parisian vampires were the worst of all.”
― Cassandra Clare, quote from The Runaway Queen

“The rule is, “When in doubt, load it out.” Of course the more you carry, the greater a toll it takes on your body, the slower you move, the harder it is to react quickly to a threat.”
― quote from No Easy Day: The Firsthand Account of the Mission That Killed Osama Bin Laden

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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.

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