“I wanted to ask him if that was part of the plan, but I knew he would have said yes. The plan was to make war; anything that followed was part of it.”
― Dinaw Mengestu, quote from All Our Names
“The men who beat me were driven as much by fear as hate.”
― Dinaw Mengestu, quote from All Our Names
“The men who beat me were driven as much by fear as hate. They had lashed out blindly and left me for dead. Isaac had yet to feel that distinct version of violence, and because I was certain that soon enough he would, and that odds were when he did he wouldn’t survive, I didn’t bother to point out the difference. He offered me his hand as he bent down to kiss my forehead—a gesture that was intended to say that there was more between us now than just friendship. I gripped his hand just as tightly, and even lifted my head to his lips to make sure that he understood that I felt exactly the same way.”
― Dinaw Mengestu, quote from All Our Names
“He held up his suitcase. “I’ve never had much to leave behind,” he said.”
― Dinaw Mengestu, quote from All Our Names
“didn’t know one another’s names or ages or reasons for being there, and that was fine, because silence isn’t the same when it’s shared. Its sad and lonely sides are shunted off.”
― Dinaw Mengestu, quote from All Our Names
“Silence isn't the same when it's shared.”
― Dinaw Mengestu, quote from All Our Names
“Through them, the story becomes an argument for a better way of seeing, which has always struck me as being one of the novel’s better gifts, something which it is uniquely poised to do, if only because it demands the reader’s imagination, and by doing so affirms our capacity to live beyond the limited means of our private lives. We read not to encounter the Other, but to see ourselves refracted in a different landscape, in a different time, in shoes and clothes that perhaps bear no resemblance to our own.”
― Dinaw Mengestu, quote from All Our Names
“I had lost too much of the heart and all the faith needed to stay afloat in a job where every human encounter felt like an anvil strung around my neck just when I thought I was nearing the shore.”
― Dinaw Mengestu, quote from All Our Names
“For the first time in my life, every day when I woke up I had clean clothes, and something to eat two, three times a day, as much as I wanted. Once I had that, I realized my revolution was over.”
― Dinaw Mengestu, quote from All Our Names
“As far as I could tell, no one had noticed us. I thought this was what it felt like to be invisible, but when I subtracted Isaac I realized that, until he came along, this was how I had always felt. Not invisible, but a natural part of the background, entitled to all the privileges that came with ownership.”
― Dinaw Mengestu, quote from All Our Names
“I was reminded that without him I made an impact on no one. I was seen, and perhaps occasionally heard, strictly by strangers, and always in passing. I was a much poorer man for this than I had ever thought.”
― Dinaw Mengestu, quote from All Our Names
“They stared at me, at Isaac, and then at the floor rather than at each other, as if they had long since come to terms with the fact that on any given evening men could burst into their house and do something terrible to them. There's no honest measure for the toll that sort of knowledge takes, whether the scale is the breadth of a single room or an entire city.”
― Dinaw Mengestu, quote from All Our Names
“There is nothing more restless than men in power.”
― Dinaw Mengestu, quote from All Our Names
Dinaw Mengestu
Born place: in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Born date June 30, 1978
See more on GoodReads
“A perfect character might be attended with the inconvenience of being envied and hated; and that a benevolent man should allow a few faults in himself, to keep his friends in countenance.”
― Benjamin Franklin, quote from The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
“He kissed me as if I was the air he'd gone without for five days.”
― Jamie McGuire, quote from Providence
“Having a baby is painful in order to show how serious a thing life is.”
― Lisa See, quote from Shanghai Girls
“I would clear the table and Hugh would do the dishes, neither of us speaking and both of us wondering if this just might be the one to do it. 'I hear you guys broke up over a plastic hand,' people would say, and my rage would renew itself.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
“So in order to understand everything that happened, you have to start from the premise that high school sucks. Do you accept that premise? Of course you do. It is a universally acknowledged truth that high school sucks. In fact, high school is where we are first introduced to the basic existential question of life: How is it possible to exist in a place that sucks so bad?”
― Jesse Andrews, quote from Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
Mortal Heart
A Face Like Glass
Until Tuesday: A Wou...
Freedom from the Kno...
Not a Drop to Drink
Under Different Star...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.
