David Anthony Durham · 576 pages
Rating: (7.9K votes)
“Revenge is the easiest of emotions to understand and to manipulate.”
“She would never be caught unprepared again, she swore to herself. She would never trust. Never love. Never put faith in other human beings again. She would learn all she could of the shape and substance of the world, and she would find a way to survive in it.”
“She realized that she had naïvely believed that the workings of the world revolved around her and her family. Never before had she acknowledged that somebody else’s life might alter hers.”
“You've got to understand that the world's full of men who are little better than animals.... Problem is that a man is different from an animal. In the quiet afterward we know when we've done wrong.”
“I sleep lightly and tread to keep my head out of the sea of dreams.”
“She realized that the world was a dance of a million fates. In this dance she was but a single soul.”
“One must find rhythms others’ ears don’t hear.”
“I believe that if you speak from your heart each time you open your mouth, you cannot go wrong.”
“She was a nightmare of beauty and menace living right there above them, a being part raptor, part human, part divine. She knew without question that she could sweep down on them and inflict upon all of them a terrible vengeance if she wished. She had the capacity for violence within her, residing beside her heart.”
“Respect flows two ways and can mean as much to the giver as to the one receiving.”
“Imagine, they said, living an existence where the words out of your mouth changed the very fabric of the world around you.”
“Again he thought of his own losses, and he wondered why it was that the things a person had lost— or might lose— defined him more than the things he yet possessed.”
“They fed him a diet made up entirely of knowledge.”
“Who can explain just how he became the person he is? It does not happen this day or that one. It is a gradual evolution that happens largely unheralded. He simply was who he now was.”
“She said, A king is the best and worst of men. Of course. Of course.”
“When she spread her wings and leaped screeching into the air she had not the slightest doubt that every hand below her would stretch to catch her. And if one could leap from a height with no fear of falling, could one not be said to possess the secret of flight? Just like a bird, just like a god.”
“She sat, rediscovering the fullness of her first tongue in one long submersion. Again and again she would pause on a word Melio uttered. She would roll it around in her mind, feeling the contours of it. At times her mouth gaped open, her lips moving as if she were drinking in his words instead of breathing.”
“Very little of what he learned of people’s actions began or ended with either the noble ideals or the fiendish wickedness he had been taught lay behind all great struggles. There was something comforting in this.”
“Can I ask a stupid question?"
"Sure. Ask away."
"It's sort of more than one question. But... Look, um... Why do we hurt? Why do we die? Why isn't life good all the time? Why isn't it fair?"
"Those aren't stupid questions, Hazel. For some people they're the only questions that matter."
"Does that mean you won't answer them?"
"Sure, I'll answer. But it's kind of a big subject, and it's got lots of answers, and the answers don't really mean anything-- They aren't stupid questions but they could just as well be 'When is purple?' or 'Why does Thursday?', if you see what I mean..."
"Not really."
"Well, I think some of it is probably contrasts. Light and Shadow. If you never had the bad times, how would you know you had the good times? But some of it is just: If you're going to be Human, then there are a whole load of things that come with it. Eyes, a Heart, Days and Life.
It's the moments that illuminate it, though. The times you don't see when you're having them... They make the rest of it matter.”
“We often think we express negative emotions, not because we cannot help it, but because we should express them.”
“Some months earlier one of his oldest friends, Junto charter member Hugh Roberts, had written with news of the club and how the political quarreling in Philadelphia had continued to divide the membership. Franklin expressed hope that the squabbles would not keep Roberts from the meetings. “’tis now perhaps one of the oldest clubs, as I think it was formerly one of the best, in the King’s dominions; it wants but about two years of forty since it was established.” Few men were so lucky as to belong to such a group. “We loved and still love one another; we are grown grey together and yet it is too early to part. Let us sit till the evening of life is spent; the last hours were always the most joyous. When we can stay no longer ’tis time enough then to bid each other good night, separate, and go quietly to bed.” And”
“pay somebody to go to school for me.”
“لقد صنعت عباءة الحياة "في الكذب" من مادة غريبة: ما لم تغطى بإحكام المجتمع بأكلمه تصبح وكأنه من حجر.
ولكن في اللحظة التي يخترقها أحدهم من موضع ما, عندما ينادي إنسان واحد ويقول "الملك صار عارياً", عندما يخرق لاعب واحد قواعد اللعبة وبهذا يعريها على أنها مجرد لعبة, يظهر كل شيء فجأة على غير ما هو عليه, وتظهر العباءة على أنها من ورق وتبدأ وبلا توقف في التمزق والفناء.”
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.