Quotes from Acceptance

“You could know the what of something forever and never discover the why.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“Perhaps so many journals had piled up in the lighthouse because on some level most came, in time, to recognize the futility of language. Not just in Area X but against the rightness of the lived-in moment, the instant of touch, of connection for which words were such a sorrowful disappointment, so inadequate an expression of both the finite and the infinite.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“Bodies could be beacons, too, Saul knew. A lighthouse was a fixed beacon for a fixed purpose; a person was a moving one. But people still emanated light in their way, still shone across the miles as a warning, an invitation, or even just a static signal. People opened up so they became a brightness, or they went dark. They turned their light inward sometimes, so you couldn’t see it, because they had no other choice.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“Sometimes, too, other people gave you their light, and could seem to flicker, to be hardly visible at all, if no one took care of them. Because they’d given you too much and had nothing left for themselves.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“Natural places are no different than human cities. The old exists next to the new. Invasive species integrate with or push out native species. The landscape you see around you is the same as seeing an old cathedral next to a skyscraper.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“She knew where it would all lead, what it always led to in human beings--a decision about what to do. What are we going to do? Where do we go from here? How do we move forward? What is our mission now? As if purpose could solve everything, could take the outlines of what was missing and by sheer will invoke it, make it appear, bring it back to life.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“If you don't know your passion, it confuses your mind, not your heart.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“Would that not be the final humbling of the human condition? That the trees and birds, the fox and the rabbit, the wolf and the deer... reach a point at which they do not even notice us, as we are transformed.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“A whale can injure another whale with its sonar. A whale can speak to another whale across sixty miles of ocean. A whale is as intelligent as we are, just in a way we can’t quite measure or understand. Because we’re these incredibly blunt instruments.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“We must trust our thoughts while we sleep. We must trust our hunches. We must begin to examine all of those things that we think of as irrational simply because we do not understand them. In other words, we must distrust the rational, the logical, the sane, in an attempt to reach for something higher, for something more worthy.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“People who asked questions didn't necessary like being asked questions.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“Some things you can be so close to that you never grasp their true nature.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“Honesty was often just a way of being cruel.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“Never has a setting been so able to live without the souls traversing it.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“But what if you discover that the price of purpose is to render invisible so many other things?”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“What are we going to do? Where do we go from here? How do we move forward? What is our mission now? As if purpose could solve everything, could take the outlines of what was missing and by sheer will invoke it, make it appear, bring it back to life.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“And God said, Let there be light. God said that, Saul, and He has come from so far away, and His home is gone, but His purpose remains. Would you deny Him His new kingdom?”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“There's nothing to this world,' he said, 'but what our senses tell us about it, and all I can do is the best I can on that information.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“Lowry, drunk out of his mind at his going-away party, headed for Central, only three years after you had been hired, had said, “How goddamn boring. Fucking boring if they win. If we gotta live in that world.” As if people would be living in “that world” at all, which wasn’t what any of the evidence foretold, or kept foretelling, as if there were nothing worse than being bored and the only point of the world people already lived in was to find ways to combat boredom, to make sure “all the moments,” as Whitby put it when he went on about parallel universes, might be accounted for in some way, so minds wouldn’t fill up with emptiness that they bifurcated simply to have more capacity to be bored.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“I’m not an answer,” she said. “I’m a question.” She might also be a message incarnate, a signal in the flesh, even if she hadn’t yet figured out what story she was supposed to tell.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“The world we are a part of now is difficult to accept, unimaginably difficult. I don’t know if I accept everything even now. I don’t know how I can. But acceptance moves past denial, and maybe there’s a defiance in that, too.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“Some things came to you late, but late was better than never.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“A lighthouse was a fixed beacon for a fixed purpose; a person was a moving one. But people still emanated light in their way, still shown across the miles as a warning, an invitation, or even just a static signal. People opened up so they became a brightness, or they went dark. They turned their light inward sometimes, so you couldn't see it, because they had no other choice.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“You're on your own, like you've always been on your own. You have to keep going forward, until you can't go forward anymore.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“The shadows of the abyss are like the petals of a monstrous flower. Didn’t”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“There, scuttling across the floor, blind and querulous, is the old cell phone—scrabbling and bulky, trying to get away from you.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“What’s wrong with asking questions?” “Nothing.” Everything. Once the questions snuck in, whatever had been certain became uncertain. Questions opened the way for doubt. His father had told him that. “Don’t let them ask questions. You’re already giving them the answers, even if they don’t know it.” “But you’re curious, too,” she said. “Why do you say that?” “You guard the light. And light sees everything.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“Perché, dopo averla rinviata in così tanti modi, credo che la mia trasformazione sarà più radicale del previsto, che potrei diventare davvero qualcosa di simile alla creatura lamentosa. A quel punto vedrò la luna vera?”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“Whitby’s often silent, and when he speaks his questions and concerns do nothing to alleviate the pressure of that gloom, the sense of intent eternal and everlasting that occupies this stretch of land, that predates Area X. The still, standing water, the oppressive blackness of a sky in which the blue peers down through the trees at startling intervals, only to be taken away again, and only ever seeming to come to you from a thousand miles off anyway.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

“that as a kind of trap, a way to become distracted … and still the sense that whatever will disorient and destabilize lies below you, deciding whether to be seen or remain unseen—around a corner, beyond the horizon, and with each new empty reveal, each curve of the steps lit by the blue flames of dead words, toward an unknown become shy, you are wound ever tighter, even though there is nothing to be seen.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from Acceptance

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Popular quotes

“The intelligent want self-control; children want candy. —RUMI INTRODUCTION Welcome to Willpower 101 Whenever I mention that I teach a course on willpower, the nearly universal response is, “Oh, that’s what I need.” Now more than ever, people realize that willpower—the ability to control their attention, emotions, and desires—influences their physical health, financial security, relationships, and professional success. We all know this. We know we’re supposed to be in control of every aspect of our lives, from what we eat to what we do, say, and buy. And yet, most people feel like willpower failures—in control one moment but overwhelmed and out of control the next. According to the American Psychological Association, Americans name lack of willpower as the number-one reason they struggle to meet their goals. Many feel guilty about letting themselves and others down. Others feel at the mercy of their thoughts, emotions, and cravings, their lives dictated by impulses rather than conscious choices. Even the best-controlled feel a kind of exhaustion at keeping it all together and wonder if life is supposed to be such a struggle. As a health psychologist and educator for the Stanford School of Medicine’s Health Improvement Program, my job is to help people manage stress and make healthy choices. After years of watching people struggle to change their thoughts, emotions, bodies, and habits, I realized that much of what people believed about willpower was sabotaging their success and creating unnecessary stress. Although scientific research had much to say that could help them, it was clear that these insights had not yet become part of public understanding. Instead, people continued to rely on worn-out strategies for self-control. I saw again and again that the strategies most people use weren’t just ineffective—they actually backfired, leading to self-sabotage and losing control. This led me to create “The Science of Willpower,” a class offered to the public through Stanford University’s Continuing Studies program. The course brings together the newest insights about self-control from psychology, economics, neuroscience, and medicine to explain how we can break old habits and create healthy habits, conquer procrastination, find our focus, and manage stress. It illuminates why we give in to temptation and how we can find the strength to resist. It demonstrates the importance of understanding the limits of self-control,”
― Kelly McGonigal, quote from The Willpower Instinct: How Self-Control Works, Why It Matters, and What You Can Do to Get More of It

“When sleep came, I would dream bad dreams. Not the baby and the big man with a cigarette-lighter dream. Another dream. The castle dream.
A little girl of about six who looks -like me, but isn’t me, is happy as she steps out of the car with her daddy. They enter the castle and go down the steps to the dungeon where people move like shadows in the glow of burning candles. There are carpets and funny pictures on the walls. Some of the people wear hoods and robes. Sometimes they chant in droning voices that make the little girl afraid. There are other children, some of them without any clothes on. There is an altar like the altar in nearby St Mildred’s Church. The children take turns lying on that altar so the people, mostly men, but a few women, can kiss and lick their private parts. The daddy holds the hand of the little girl tightly. She looks up at him and he smiles. The little girl likes going out with her daddy.
I did want to tell Dr Purvis these dreams but I didn’t want her to think I was crazy, and so kept them to myself. The psychiatrist was wiser than I appreciated at the time; sixteen-year-olds imagine they are cleverer than they really are. Dr Purvis knew I had suffered psychological damage as a child, that’s why she kept making a fresh appointment week after week. But I was unable to give her the tools and clues to find out exactly what had happened.”
― quote from Today I'm Alice: Nine Personalities, One Tortured Mind

“What is certain is that the world has got beyond the stage at which one may affect modesty and maidenly shame, and I think that the world is too old a duffer to assume to be childish and maidenly without becoming ridiculous.

Since its marriage to civilization society has forfeited its right to be ingenuous and prudish. There is a blush which beseems the bride as she is being bedded, which would be out of place on the morrow; for the young wife mayhap remembers no more what it is to be a girl, or, if she does remember it, it is very indecent, and seriously compromises the reputation of the husband.”
― Théophile Gautier, quote from Mademoiselle de Maupin

“I did not know how to reach him, how to catch up with him... The land of tears is so mysterious.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, quote from Der kleine Prinz

“If designers and researchers do not sometimes fail, it is a sign that they are not trying hard enough—they are not thinking the great creative thoughts that will provide breakthroughs in how we do things. It is possible to avoid failure, to always be safe. But that is also the route to a dull, uninteresting life.”
― Donald A. Norman, quote from Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition (Revised)

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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.