“Books are the ultimate Dumpees: put them down and they’ll wait for you forever; pay attention to them and they always love you back.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“What is the point of being alive if you don't at least try to do something remarkable?”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“I figured something out. The future is unpredictable.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“Here's to all the places we went. And all the places we'll go. And here's to me, whispering again and again and again and again: iloveyou”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“That's who you really like. The people you can think out loud in front of.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“There's some people in this world who you can just love and love and love no matter what.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“If people could see me the way I see myself - if they could live in my memories - would anyone love me?”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“He liked the mere act of reading, the magic of turning scratches on a page into words inside his head.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“What matters to you defines your mattering.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“Because you're only thinking they-might-not-like-me-they-might-not-like-me, and guess what? When you act like that, no one likes you.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“How do you just stop being terrified of getting left behind and ending up by yourself forever and not meaning anything to the world?”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“That smile could end wars and cure cancer.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“you can never love someone as much as you miss them.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“I don't think you can ever fill the empty space with the thing you lost.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“The thing about chameleoning your way through life is that it gets to where nothing is real.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“It's just that I learned a while ago that the best way to get people to like you is not to like them too much.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“We fatties have a bond, dude. It's like a secret society. We got all kinds of shit you don't know about. Handshakes, special fat people dances-we got these secret fugging lairs in the center of the earth and we go down there in the middle of the night when all the skinny kids are sleeping and eat cake and friend chicken and shit. Why d'you think Hollis is still sleeping, kafir? Because we were up all night in the secret lair injecting butter frosting into our veins. ...A fatty trusts another fatty.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“Do you know what your problem is? You can't live with the idea that someone might leave.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“I am crying, he thought, opening his eyes to stare through the soapy, stinging water. I feel like crying, so I must be crying, but it's impossible to tell because I'm underwater. But he wasn't crying. Curiously, he felt too depressed to cry. Too hurt. It felt as if she'd taken the part of him that cried.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“They like their coffee like they like their ex-boyfriends: bitter.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“Do you ever wonder whether people would like you more or less if they could see inside you? But I always wonder about that. If people could see me the way I see myself—if they could live in my memories—would anyone, anyone, love me?”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“Dude, you're such a geek. And that's coming from an overweight Star Trek fan who scored a 5 on the AP Calculus test. So you know your condition is grave”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“You matter as much as the things that matter to you. And I got so backwards trying to matter to him. All this time, there were real things to care about: real, good people who care about me, and this place. It's so easy to get stuck. You just get caught in being something, being special or cool or whatever, to the point where you don't even know why you need it; you just think you do.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“Babies are made through an act that you will eventually find intriguing but for right now will just sort of horrify you, and also sometimes people do stuff that involves baby-making parts that does not actually involve making babies, like for instance kiss each other in places that are not on the face.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“I don't think your missing pieces ever fit inside you again once they go missing.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“The feeling of loving her and being loved by her welled up in him, and he could taste the adrenaline in the back of his throat, and maybe it wasn't over, and maybe he could feel her hand in his again and hear her loud, brash voice contort itself into a whisper to say I-love-you as if it were a secret, and an immense one.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“You know what I hate? The outdoors. I mean, generally. I don't like outside. I'm an inside person. I'm all about refrigeration and indoor plumbing and Judge Judy.”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“Something about telling that story made my gut grow back together."
What?"
Oh, nothing. Just thinking out loud."
That's who you really like. The people you can think out loud in front of."
The people who've been in your secret hiding places."
The people you bite your thumb in front of."
Hi."
Hi."
..."
..."
Wow. My first Lindsey."
My second Colin."
That was fun. Let's try it again."
Sold."
..."
..."
..."
...”
― John Green, quote from An Abundance of Katherines
“Good,” said Gideon. “It means the effect of the alcohol is wearing off. One question, by the way: what did you want a hairbrush for?”
“I wanted it as a substitute for a mike,” I murmured through my fingers. “Oh, my God! I’m so horrible.”
“But you have a pretty voice,” said Gideon. “Even I liked it, and I told you I hate musicals.”
“Then how come you can play songs from them so well?” I put my hands in my lap and looked at him. “You were amazing! Is there anything you can’t do?” Good heavens, I heard myself sounding like a groupie.
“No. Go ahead, you’re welcome to think me some kind of god!” He was grinning now. “It’s rather sweet of you!”
― Kerstin Gier, quote from Sapphire Blue
“I have often seen people grouped like that on the common outside our gates on Bank holidays. Most often the man has a handkerchief over his face to shade him from the sun, and the woman squats beside him and peers through the undergrowth to see that the children come to no harm as they play. It has sometimes seemed to me that there was a significance about it. You know when one goes into the damp, odorous coolness of a church in a Catholic country and sees the kneeling worshipers, their bodies bent stiffly and reluctantly, and yet with abandonment as though to represent the inevitable bending of the will to a purpose outside the individual person, or when under any sky one sees a mother with her child in her arms, something turns in one's heart like a sword, and one says to oneself, "If humanity forgets these attitudes there is an end to the world.”
― Rebecca West, quote from The Return of The Soldier
“his mind's like Alcatraz. once something's in, it never gets out”
― Mary Elizabeth Summer, quote from Trust Me, I'm Lying
“It is a laborious madness and an impoverishing one, the madness of composing vast books - setting out in five hundred pages an idea that can be perfectly related orally in five minutes. The better way to go about it is to pretend that those books already exist, and offer a summary, a commentary on them." (From the Introduction of 1941's The Garden of Forking Paths)”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from Fictions
“A free press is equally free to print the truth or ignore it, as it chooses.”
― T.R. Fehrenbach, quote from This Kind of War: A Study in Unpreparedness
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.