Quotes from A True Novel

854 pages

Rating: (656 votes)


“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


Popular quotes

“You're saying one day I'll be a butterfly,” he says skeptically. I look up. “I'm saying you've always been one.”
― Lindy Zart, quote from Unlit Star


“Investigators found that in most cases one of the two versions of a doublet story would refer to the deity by the divine name, Yahweh (formerly mispronounced Jehovah), and the other version of the story would refer to the deity simply as “God.”
― Richard Elliott Friedman, quote from Who Wrote the Bible?


“When it is dark enough, you can see the stars.”
― Chris Bradford, quote from The Way of the Dragon


“The group’s camaraderie had a certain level of appeal in a city where a sexually active girl could find herself waking up in a house on fire,”
― Katie Coyle, quote from Vivian Apple at the End of the World


“As a Jewish kid during those times, I fought to live every day. I didn't have a choice. As an influential Nazi, Schindler did have a choice. Countless times he could have abandoned us, taken his fortune, and fled. He could have decided that his life depended on working us to death but he didn't. Instead, he put his own life in danger every time he protected us for no other reason than it was the right thing to do. I am not a philosopher, but I believe that Oskar Schindler defines heroism. He proves that one person can stand up to evil and make a difference. I am living proof of that. I recall a television interview I once saw with scholar and writer Joseph Campbell. I've never forgotten his definition of a hero. Campbell said that a hero is an ordinary human being who does "the best of things in the worst of times". Oskar Schindler personifies that definition.”
― quote from The Boy on the Wooden Box


Interesting books

Ever After
(27.1K)
Ever After
by Kim Harrison
So Long, See You Tomorrow
(6.4K)
So Long, See You Tom...
by William Maxwell
No Time for Goodbye
(22.9K)
No Time for Goodbye
by Linwood Barclay
Herzog
(16.4K)
Herzog
by Saul Bellow
Cleopatra's Daughter
(22.1K)
Cleopatra's Daughter
by Michelle Moran
Hiroshima Mon Amour
(3.2K)
Hiroshima Mon Amour
by Marguerite Duras

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.