“But for someone like me, who moved into an entirely different world when still quite young, it’s as if a deep gap divides my past and my present.”
― quote from A True Novel
“Time flew over me, its black wings spread.”
― quote from A True Novel
“I believe that a girl begins life as a doll her mother can dress up as she pleases, a mirror where her mother's fancies are reflected; but as she grows older, her own nature begins to show.”
― quote from A True Novel
“She's still quite fit at ninety, fit enough to chew her food with her own teeth. Apparently she grew up in a house without a bar of soap, let alone tooth powder. Her family didn't have electricity until she started elementary school, and she'd never seen a train until the tracks of the Koumi line were laid in Saku. It's exactly as if she were born in the Edo period. These days, you only have to drive for five minutes to find a sparkling clean convenience store, with bright lights above shelves stocked with everything you could possibly need. Land that used to be fields of mulberry bushes is now crisscrossed by smooth, wide roads lined with video rental stores and fast food restaurants.
I would say O-Hatsu has seen more changes in her lifetime than I have. After all, she lived for most of the century when this country was changing faster than it ever had before. Even so, I have a feeling that the inside of her head has remained much the same as when she was a girl. By "the inside of her head" I mean the way she sees the world around her—the language she uses to make sense of it. In my case, the very way I looked at the world and the words I used to understand it had altogether changed.”
― quote from A True Novel
“IN MICHIGAN IT seemed as if spring would never come; then when it did, all too soon it was summer. One day I realized the cold was loosening its grip, and then overnight, the weather turned hot, with the sun whitening the concrete streets. As if to reward themselves for having endured such a long, harsh winter, everyone walked around wearing as little as they could get away with.”
― quote from A True Novel
“Privately, I felt that living in that privileged environment, where her emotions ran unchecked, had made her oversensitive and unstable.”
― quote from A True Novel
“I have gone to war and now I can issue my complaint. I can sit on my porch and complain all day. And you must listen. Some of you will say to me: You signed the contract, you crying bitch, and you fought in a war because of your signature, no one held a gun to your head. This is true, but because I signed the contract and fulfilled my obligation to fight one of America’s wars, I am entitled to speak, to say, I belong to a fucked situation.”
― quote from Jarhead : A Marine's Chronicle of the Gulf War and Other Battles
“To quote Shirley Polanski, head waitress at the Humdinger Diner: "Beware of a big man whose stomach doesn't move when he laughs."
I think a Chinese philosopher said it first, but these things trickle down to the food service community.”
― Joan Bauer, quote from Hope Was Here
“How very awkward places we do choose in which to propose to one another!' remarked Mr. Beaumaris”
― Georgette Heyer, quote from Arabella
“The living are made of nothing but flaws. The dead, with each passing day in the afterlife, become more and more impeccable to those who remain earthbound.”
― Anna Godbersen, quote from Splendor
“the romantic, spendthrift moral act is ultimately the practical one—the practical, expendient, cozy-dog move is the one that comes to grief.”
― Anton Myrer, quote from Once An Eagle
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.