“I am not easy to love but I am well loved. I try to love well in return.”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“When he finished talking, I said, “Your mother did not deserve the unwanted attentions of a man like my father.” I said, “I did not deserve the unwanted attentions of a man like you. It is often women who pay the price for what men want.”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“Once upon a time, my life was a fairy tale and then I was stolen from everything I’ve ever loved. There was no happily ever after. After days of dying, I was dead.”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“because sometimes, to find home, you must first go farther afield.”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“My mother has often told me there are some things you cannot tell a man who loves you, things he cannot handle knowing.”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“It is an amazing thing,” my father once told me after Christophe was born, “how much a child loves a parent. That kind of love terrifies me.”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“When I tried to push him away, he only held on to me more tightly. I have always appreciated how he never lets me go. I need that. My natural instinct is for flight and the safety of solitude.”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“Kenbe fèm,” she said. Hold steady. Stay strong.”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“She grabbed me and pulled me into a warm embrace. Just as quickly she pushed me away. She said, “Thank you for getting on my nerves for so long,” and I said, “You’re welcome, Lorraine.” We have talked three or four times a week ever since. She is family.”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“My brother tried to sag his jeans until a stranger in the airport grabbed him by the ears and hitched his pants up to their proper place, sucking her teeth and shaking her head.”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“People love a real tragedy when they think it cannot happen to them.”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“I looked plenty close, Mireille, and saw many beautiful things but I also saw terrible things. I can’t pretend otherwise. You shouldn’t expect me to.” “Right,”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“Mona is my best friend. Wherever she has gone, the whole of our lives, I have tried to follow. Michael and I moved to Miami because she was there. Wherever she is feels more like home.”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“Girl children are not safe in a world where there are men. They need to learn to be strong. There”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“I shouted, “This is not right,” knowing my words were useless. There’s no room for such distinctions in a country where too many people have to claw for what they need and still have nothing to hold. My”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“Until that moment, Michael had not understood the vastness of the world and how small a place he held in it,”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“my hands, my fingers quickly slicking with”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“What is truly terrifying is the exact knowledge of what will come and being unable to save yourself from it. Grabbing”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“I wanted to tell him I saw the exact same things he did, that this country was a lot for anyone to take, but it was easier to pretend I didn’t. Back”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“How could I forget? We had a blast but we were surrounded by misery. That is hard to take. I’m just being honest.” “Michael,”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“I don’t understand women like you,” he said, winding down. “You could have made things easier for yourself. Would it be so hard to play nice with me?” “I don’t understand men like you. You could have made things easier for me.” “You”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“You people are all the same. You live in your grand homes looking down on us in the gutter. You think you control everything and can have anything.” “There”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“I ran through these streets and thought, “This is a Haiti I have never seen or known.” It was a Haiti no one should have to know. I”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“People like you always choose to absolve yourselves. You are complicit even if you do not actively contribute to the problem because you do nothing to solve it.” I”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“I stared at the woman who betrayed me. I shouted, “How could you? We are both daughters of Dessalines.” She stood perfectly still. She did not blink. She did not look away with her dry eyes. By”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“The mother kills one child to feed twelve, and one child to feed eleven, and one child to feed ten until she is left with but one child, whom she also slaughters because she too hungers. Finally, she returns to the middle of a cornfield where she slaughtered her other children, where the bones of their thirteen bodies lay. She slits her own throat because she cannot bear the burden of having done what needed to be done. After telling me this story, Elsa said, “A West Indian woman always faces such choices.” The”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“I made my choice. There is nothing you cannot do when you are no one.”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“It is often women who pay the price for what men want.”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
“And now, she knew her husband had lied to her. So many years, following him to so many places, and he had repaid her with such staggering deceit.”
― Roxane Gay, quote from An Untamed State
Roxane Gay
See more on GoodReads
“Just as the habit does not make the monk, the sceptre does not make the king.”
― José Saramago, quote from Blindness
“So Dad has joined the others up there. I feel that they do watch and guide, and I also feel that they join me in the hope that this story of our people can help alleviate the legacies of the fact that preponderantly the histories have been written by the winners.”
― Alex Haley, quote from Roots: The Saga of an American Family
“If you need help bark like a dog." - Gendry.
"That's stupid. If I need help I'll shout help." - Arya”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from A Clash of Kings
“I REMEMBER the day the Aleut ship came to our island. At first it seemed like a small shell afloat on the sea. Then it grew larger and was a gull with folded wings. At last in the rising sun it became what it really was—a red ship with two red sails. My brother and I had gone to the head of a canyon that winds down to a little harbor which is called Coral Cove. We had gone to gather roots that grow there in the spring. My brother Ramo was only a little boy half my age, which was twelve. He was small for one who had lived so many suns and moons, but quick as a cricket. Also foolish as a cricket when he was excited. For this reason and because I wanted him to help me gather roots and not go running off, I said nothing about the shell I saw or the gull with folded wings. I went on digging in the brush with my pointed stick as though nothing at all were happening on the sea. Even when I knew for sure that the gull was a ship with two red sails. But Ramo’s eyes missed little in the world. They were black like a lizard’s and very large and, like the eyes of a lizard, could sometimes look sleepy. This was the time when they saw the most. This was the way they looked now. They were half-closed, like those of a lizard lying on a rock about to flick out its tongue to catch a fly. “The sea is smooth,” Ramo said. “It is a flat stone without any scratches.” My brother liked to pretend that one thing was another. “The sea is not a stone without scratches,” I said. “It is water and no waves.” “To me it is a blue stone,” he said. “And far away on the edge of it is a small cloud which sits on the stone.” “Clouds do not sit on stones. On blue ones or black ones or any kind of stones.” “This one does.” “Not on the sea,” I said. “Dolphins sit there, and gulls, and cormorants, and otter, and whales too, but not clouds.” “It is a whale, maybe.” Ramo was standing on one foot and then the other, watching the ship coming, which he did not know was a ship because he had never seen one. I had never seen one either, but I knew how they looked because I had been told. “While you gaze at the sea,” I said, “I dig roots. And it is I who will eat them and you who will not.” Ramo began to punch at the earth with his stick, but as the ship came closer, its sails showing red through the morning mist, he kept watching it, acting all the time as if he were not. “Have you ever seen a red whale?” he asked. “Yes,” I said, though I never had. “Those I have seen are gray.” “You are very young and have not seen everything that swims in the world.” Ramo picked up a root and was about to drop it into the basket. Suddenly his mouth opened wide and then closed again. “A canoe!” he cried. “A great one, bigger than all of our canoes together. And red!” A canoe or a ship, it did not matter to Ramo. In the very next breath he tossed the root in the air and was gone, crashing through the brush, shouting as he went. I kept on gathering roots, but my hands trembled as I dug in the earth, for I was more excited than my brother. I knew that it was a ship there on the”
― Scott O'Dell, quote from Island of the Blue Dolphins
“I've found out why people laugh. They laugh because it hurts so much . . . because it's the only thing that'll make it stop hurting.”
― Robert A. Heinlein, quote from Stranger in a Strange Land
Devil's Bride
Stake That
Becoming Human
This Alien Shore
MélusineBookQuoters 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.
