“When someone who's starved of love is shown something that looks like sincere affection, is it any wonder that she jumps at it and clings to it?”
― quote from Autobiography of a Geisha
“What a lovely place this world would be if only people would feel affection for everyone else, and all the ugliness of the human heart were to vanish - our envy of those better off than ourselves and our scorn for those worse off.”
― quote from Autobiography of a Geisha
“No matter how deep in disgrace, a human being IS human, after all.”
― quote from Autobiography of a Geisha
“Nor was I the only one struggling.To live an ordinary life, like any ordinary person, must have been the vain dream of countless others.”
― quote from Autobiography of a Geisha
“Only when I turned thirty did I finally feel for the first time that I was free, that I could live as I liked, as an individual. It's as if at thirty, I'd been born for the first time. Until then, I was never more than someone's tool.”
― quote from Autobiography of a Geisha
“Never give birth to children thoughtlessly!'' I want to shout it out loud.That is why, stroke by faltering stroke, I've written this all down.”
― quote from Autobiography of a Geisha
“I believe in fiction and the power of stories because that way we speak in tongues. We are not silenced. All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words.”
― Jeanette Winterson, quote from Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?
“How is it that the poets have said so many fine things about our first love, so few about our later love? Are their first poems their best? or are not those the best which come from their fuller thought, their larger experience, their deeper-rooted affections? The boy's flute-like voice has its own spring charm; but the man should yield a richer, deeper music.”
― George Eliot, quote from Adam Bede
“It's not fair."
"It's not. But then, that's the game. It makes life great. The fact that it ends when we don't want it to. The ending gives it meaning.”
― Marisha Pessl, quote from Night Film
“Nothing on the face of this earth - and I do mean nothing - is half so dangerous as a children's story that happens to be real, and you and I are wandering blindfolded through a myth devised by a maniac.”
― Barry Hughart, quote from Bridge of Birds
“She thought of all the people in all the paintings she had seen that day, not just Father's, in all the paintings of the world, in fact. Their eyes, the particular turn of a head, their loneliness or suffering or grief was borrowed by an artist to be seen by other people throughout the years who would never see them face to face. People who would be that close to her, she thought, a matter of a few arms' lengths, looking, looking, and they would never know her.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from Girl in Hyacinth Blue
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.