“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
“It had given him a charge of entitlement and invincibility he would draw upon through life, like a limitless bank account.)”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from The Falls
“He wondered what the years had done to his face as he traced the effects on hers. Eyes the same blue-lit green, but where mischievous joy once danced, now he saw sadness, deep as the ocean. Her cheeks were thinner. There was something else too: the arrogant pride of a princess seemed to be extinct. Yet the indefinable, untamed quality of her spirit remained. Yes, it was Torina.”
― Victoria Hanley, quote from The Seer and the Sword
“Kyle’s shrill voice interrupted their moment. “Figured you two would turn this into a scout meeting. Will you get your asses up here? People are waiting. I mean Beckett here has maybe a few
hours before he’s bent over a metal toilet getting it up the ass from a
guy named Bubba. Do you want him to have fun now or not?”
The streetlight illuminated Beckett as he appeared next to Kyle. “Why would I be the bitch? I don’t think that’s a fair f*cking assumption.”
Kyle refused to look at him and crossed her arms. “Of course you’d be the bitch. You have dimples. Bitches have dimples. And I bet your ass is soft like two pillows. Bubba’s going to love bouncing off of you.”
Beckett stormed away, dragging Kyle with him. “I’ll be the f*cker,” he told her. “Not the f*ckee. The f*cker.”
“Fine, a$$hole, you’re the f*cker,” Kyle’s voice faded away as they returned to the party.”
― Debra Anastasia, quote from Poughkeepsie
“Anger is manageable; sadness is heartbreaking.”
― Cat Patrick, quote from Revived
“The personal collisions that upset us the most, the ones we seem powerless to let go of, are those in which we played a role that we are unwilling to acknowledge. That’s why the pain lasts—because we refuse to look at its source. We cannot detach it, because we refuse to look at the point of attachment.”
― John Verdon, quote from Think of a Number
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.