“I think I can remember
being dead. Many times, in winter,
I approached Zeus. Tell me, I would ask him,
how can I endure the earth?”
― Louise Glück, quote from Averno
“Doesn’t everyone want to feel in the night
the beloved body, compass, polestar,
to hear the quiet breathing that says
I am alive, that means also
you are alive, because you hear me,
you are here with me”
― Louise Glück, quote from Averno
“I am tired of having hands
she said
I want wings —
But what will you do without your hands
to be human?
I am tired of human
she said
I want to live on the sun —”
― Louise Glück, quote from Averno
“It is true that there is not enough beauty in the world.
It is also true that I am not competent to restore it.
Neither is there candor, and here I may be of some use.”
― Louise Glück, quote from Averno
“The assignment was to fall in love.
The details were up to you.
The second part was
to include in the poem certain words,
words drawn from a specific text
on another subject altogether.”
― Louise Glück, quote from Averno
“The sound of the sea— just memory now.”
― Louise Glück, quote from Averno
“You get on a train, you disappear.
You write your name on the window, you disappear.
There are places like this everywhere,
places you enter as a young girl
from which you never return.”
― Louise Glück, quote from Averno
“I fell asleep in a river, I woke in a river,
of my mysterious
failure to die I can tell you
nothing, neither
who saved me nor for what cause—”
― Louise Glück, quote from Averno
“No private detective looks like a private detective. That's one of the first rules of private detection."
"But if no private detective looks like a private detective, how does a private detective know what it is he's supposed not to look like? Seems to me there's a problem there.”
― Douglas Adams, quote from The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul
“Men have always hated the wolf."
"Why?" said the boy indignantly, suddenly looking very unhappy indeed.
"Maybe because they see something in the wolf that they hate and fear in themselves. Maybe because wolves take their sheep and goats, as if we shouldn't all share life's bounty.”
― David Clement-Davies, quote from The Sight
“[W]alking sometimes in a perfectly desolate plain where there have been no houses nor trees to guide me, I have been occasionally compelled to remain stationary for hours together, waiting till the rain came before continuing my journey.”
― Edwin A. Abbott, quote from Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
“Just as a man is fulfilled through working out the intricate details of solving a problem, a woman is fulfilled through talking about the details of her problems.”
― John Gray, quote from Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus
“Because of all the things I've experienced on this journey - shrinking and growing, flying sprites, living chess pieces - not a one of them is more magical than this moment.”
― A.G. Howard, quote from Splintered
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.