“Well, sometimes home is a person.”
“Choice or no, my heart is his.”
“Love without choice isn't love at all.”
“And here we are, in the middle, surrounded by a sea of stars.
A million suns.
Any of them could hold a planet. Any of them could hold a home.
But all of them are out of reach. [p.218]”
“He's the only stable thing in the swirling chaos.”
“I feel alone.
I don't mean i feel lonely; I mean i feel alone, the same way i feel the blanket resting on my body, or the feathers of my pillow under my head, or the tight string of my sleep pants twisted up around my waist. I feel alone as if it were an actual thing, seeping throughout this whole level like mist blanketing a field, reaching into all the hidden corners of my room and finding nothing living but me. It's a cold sort of feeling, this.”
“But Amy," Elder says. "Space suits!”
“I look up. And I am surrounded by the universe.
silence
and stars
A million suns stretch out beyond me, their light piercing the darkness.”
“I’m sorry.’ The two most inadequate words in the English language.”
“It's Elder who's my safe place. Elder's my home.”
“Maybe one day the smears of paint Harley left throughout Godspeed will fade, and maybe the stars never will, but i'd rather have Harley's colors.”
“Emotion courses through my veins, choking me. I feel so insignificant, a tiny speck surrounded by a million stars.
A million suns.”
“I open my mouth. I want o say: I'm breaking, and i need someone to hold me together.
But no sound comes out.”
“I look up, and he’s searching my eyes, just like he did after kissing me for the first time in the rain. “What are you looking for?”
He doesn’t answer.
He doesn’t need to.
I know what he wants.
And it’s not fair.
“Just because we’re the only two teenagers on this whole ship doesn’t mean I have to love you. Why can’t I have a choice? Options?”
Elder steps back, stung.
“Look, it’s not that I don’t like you,” I say quickly, reaching for him. He jerks away. “It’s just…”
“Just what?” he growls.
Just that if I was back on Earth instead of on this damn ship, if I had met Elder at school or at a club or on a blind date, if I had my choice between Elder and every other boy in the world…Would I love him then?
Would he love me?
Love without choice isn’t love at all.
“Just that I don’t want to be with you just because there’s no one else.” [p.57-58]”
“People are, at their heart, constantly moving toward a state of entropy. Much like this ship. We’re all spiraling out of control.”
“So you’re sticking with me, and I’m sticking with you.”
“Elder mocked me for praying once, and i spent an hour berating him for that. He ended up throwing up his hands, laughing, and telling me i could believe whatever i wanted if i was going to hold onto my beliefs so hard.”
“You could drop me anywhere in the universe, blindfolded, and I'd know this was his room just from the smell.”
“...that was before I'd started thinking about how life stuck on a ship wouldn't be so bad if Elder walked around pantless more.”
“I want her so much that it overrides everything else, every other thought in my head, every instinct, every restraint.”
“When I finally get out of bed, the only thing I want to do is go straight to Amy and demand her forgiveness. Maybe we can at least go back to what we had before our fight, even if all we had was an awkward friendship punctuated by significant silences.”
“Before, if I thought Christmas, I would have remembered my past on Earth and would have succumbed to the aching sadness for a life I can never have again.
Now, I can think the word and not feel anything but a dull ache, a phantom pain for a part of my life that’s been amputated. [p.244]”
“I told Victria that love is a choice, and I told myself that I didn't have to choose Elder, but I can't forget the way my heart stopped when his did.”
“As soon as the words slip past my lips, I wish I could grab them with my hands and crush them in my fists.
But I can’t.
The words are there.”
“Is almost a good enough reason for fear ?”
“I click on the deaths and read the names carefully, memorising them. Because here’s the simple truth—if I hadn’t taken the ship off Phydus, people like ***** and ******* would still be alive. And while I could say that a shorter life with feelings is better than a longer life without, the dead can’t tell me their side. [p.88]”
“All I had to do was die a little, and you get a new planet!"
I expected her to laugh, or at least smile. I did not expect her to slap my arm. "You stupid idiot!" she says, smacking me again. "I don't want the new planet without you!"
Her eyes round as she realizes what she just said. Anytime we'd gotten this close to talking about us before, Amy has shied away from the topic. But now, instead of drawing away from me, she leans closer. Her hair spills over her shoulders, brushing my chest as she leans down. Her fiery joy at learning about the planet is replaced with something else, something warmer like a slow-burning but steady flame.
"It wouldn't be worth it without you," she says, her voice low.”
“This is what I'm king of: a whirling mass of humans who either hate me or ignore me.”
“One who has loved truly, can never lose entirely. Love is whimsical and temperamental. Its nature is ephemeral, and transitory. It comes when it pleases,and goes away without warning. Accept and enjoy it while it remains, but spend no time worrying about its departure. Worry will never bring it back.”
“Maybe we really are made of the same clay, maybe we really are condemned, blameless, to the same, identical mediocrity.”
“You are a Chosen Man. You are Parmenion, the Death of Nations. A hundred thousand souls will you
send to the dark river, screaming and wailing, lamenting their fate. It is right and just that you
should know your choices.”
“He's not your type."
Peabody's face clouded exactly as it had when Eve had rejected the perfume. "How come - I like looking at his type."
"Sure, but try to have a conversation with him." Eve dipped her hands in her pockets and rocked back on her heels. "Guy's in love with himself and figures every woman who gets a load of him has to go moony eyed - just like you're doing. He'd bore you to death in ten minutes because all he'd talk about is himself - how he looks, what he does, what he likes. You'd just be his latest accessory."
Peabody considered, watching as the gold-tipped Adonis posed at the check-in counter. "Okay, so we won't bother to talk. We'll just have sex."
"He'd be a lousy lay - wouldn't give a damn if you got off or not."
"I'm getting off just looking at him." But she sighed when he took out a small silver-backed mirror and examined his face with obvious delight. "It's times like this I hate it when you're right.”
“Era proprio la mia quell’immagine intravista in un lampo? Sono proprio così io, di fuori, quando vivendo - non mi penso? Dunque per gli altri sono quell’estraneo sospeso nello specchio: quello, e non già quale io mi conosco: quell’uno lì che io stesso prima, scorgendolo, non ho riconosciuto. Sono quell’estraneo che non posso veder vivere se non così, in un attimo impensato. Un estraneo che possono vedere e conoscere solamente gli altri, e io no.”
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.