“What are you supposed to do with all the love you have for somebody if that person is no longer there? What happens to all that leftover love? Do you suppress it? Do you ignore it? Are you supposed to give it to someone else?”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from After You'd Gone
“I don't believe in fate. I don't believe in cushioning your insecurities with a system of belief that tells you 'Don't worry. This may be your life but you're not in control. There is something or someone looking out for you -- it's already organised.' It's all chance and choice, which is far more frightening.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from After You'd Gone
“She has spent most of the day reading and is feeling rather out of touch with reality, as if her own life has become insubstantial in the face of the fiction she's been absorbed in.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from After You'd Gone
“Why isn't life better designed so it warns you when terrible things are about to happen?”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from After You'd Gone
“An English teacher at school once said to her, 'Alice, one thing I hope you never find out is that a broken heart hurts physically.' Nothing she has ever experienced has prepared her for the pain of this. Most of the time her heart feels as though it's waterlogged and her ribcage, her arms, her back, her temples, her legs all ache in a dull, persistent way: but at times like this the incredulity and the appalling irreversibility of what has happened cripple her with a pain so bad she often doesn't speak for days.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from After You'd Gone
“Edinburgh suited Ann; she liked the tall, dignified buildings of grey stone, the short days that sank into street-lamped evenings at five o'clock, and the dual personality of the city's main street, which on one side had glittering shops and on the other the green sweep of Princes Street Gardens.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, quote from After You'd Gone
“I say unto you: one must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star. I say unto you: you still have chaos in yourselves.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from The Portable Nietzsche
“Why couldn’t I have spent the last few months like this, wrapped in his arms, drinking in the warm, spicy scent of him? Oh, wait. Cooper was a complete dick to me, that’s why.”
― Molly Harper, quote from How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf
“I tried to whisper sweet nothings into your ear but you're way the fuck over there and I'm way the fuck over here.”
― quote from I'll Be Your Drill, Soldier
“Years later I was in the Sudan on a conservation project when I heard an incredible story on good authority that sounded similar to my own. During the twenty-year war between northern and southern Sudan elephants were being slaughtered both for ivory and meat and so large numbers migrated to Kenya for safety. Within days of the final ceasefire being signed, the elephants left their adopted residence en masse and trekked the hundreds of miles back home to Sudan. How they knew that their home range was now safe is just another indication of the incredible abilities of these amazing creatures.”
― Lawrence Anthony, quote from The Elephant Whisperer
“I find myself wanting to congratulate past-me for doing or saying whatever it was that caught Ansel's attention in the first place and-by some act of God or alcohol I still don't understand-held it. Sometimes, I think, past-me is a genius.”
― Christina Lauren, quote from Sweet Filthy Boy
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.