Quotes from A Note in the Margin

Isabelle Rowan ·  276 pages

Rating: (2.4K votes)


“...there is more to life than the main story. Check out the notes in the margins because maybe they're even more important.”
― Isabelle Rowan, quote from A Note in the Margin


“We all want to be stronger and better. Sometimes just to prove that we're good enough to be respected…or loved".”
― Isabelle Rowan, quote from A Note in the Margin


“The most important things aren't always in the main story; sometimes the real meaning is scribbled in the margins.”
― Isabelle Rowan, quote from A Note in the Margin


“Two steps forward...one step back...I've always hated that old cliche too...I believe that we should all be able to dance through life and only change the tempo now and then.”
― Isabelle Rowan, quote from A Note in the Margin


“The most important things aren’t always in the main story; sometimes the real meaning is scribbled in the margins. You know, when you pick up a secondhand book and people have written stuff in it. Um, read what other people think is important. Maybe they underline a sentence or just a word. Sometimes it has nothing to do with the story but how they feel at the time.”
― Isabelle Rowan, quote from A Note in the Margin



About the author

Isabelle Rowan
Born place: in Gateshead, The United Kingdom
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“A naively formulated goal transmutes, with time, into the sinister form of the life-lie. One forty-something client told me his vision, formulated by his younger self: “I see myself retired, sitting on a tropical beach, drinking margaritas in the sunshine.” That’s not a plan. That’s a travel poster. After eight margaritas, you’re fit only to await the hangover. After three weeks of margarita-filled days, if you have any sense, you’re bored stiff and self-disgusted. In a year, or less, you’re pathetic. It’s just not a sustainable approach to later life. This kind of oversimplification and falsification is particularly typical of ideologues. They adopt a single axiom: government is bad, immigration is bad, capitalism is bad, patriarchy is bad. Then they filter and screen their experiences and insist ever more narrowly that everything can be explained by that axiom. They believe, narcissistically, underneath all that bad theory, that the world could be put right, if only they held the controls.”
― Jordan B. Peterson, quote from 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos


“But that's why you're upset now. Fiction is not life.'
'You don't believe that.'
'I think I do.'
'You know as well as I do that the line can't be drawn, that we're infected at every moment by fictions of all kinds, that it's inescapable.'
'Don't be a sophist,' he said. 'There is a world and it's palpable.'
'I don't mean that,' I said. 'I mean that it's hard really to see it, that it's all hazy with out dreams and fantasies.”
― Siri Hustvedt, quote from The Blindfold


“I never feel that the things I tell Mrs. Monday are lies. I think that lies are only when you want not to tell the truth. With Mrs. Monday I want to tell the truth but life is easier if I don't.”
― Betty MacDonald, quote from Nancy and Plum


“There is only one power that determines the course of history, just as it determines the course of every individual life: the power of man’s rational faculty—the power of ideas.”
― Ayn Rand, quote from Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal


“Things aren't always what they seem, are they?”
― quote from The Anybodies


Interesting books

Dying to Forget
(2.7K)
Dying to Forget
by Trish Marie Dawson
Last Hit
(10.7K)
Last Hit
by Jessica Clare
The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster
(3.6K)
The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society
(1.5K)
The Age of Empathy:...
by Frans de Waal
All the Stars in the Sky
(2.1K)
All the Stars in the...
by Sarah Lyons Fleming
Autobiography of a Geisha
(2.6K)

About BookQuoters

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.