“The past is a candle at great distance: too close to let you quit, too far to comfort you.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“Everyone has two memories. The one you can tell and the one that is stuck to the underside of that, the dark, tarry smear of what happened.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“She believes in will. It is so frail and delicate at night that she can’t even imagine the next morning, but it is so wide and binding by the middle of the next day that she cannot even remember the terrible night. It is as if she gives birth every day.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“Surely, somewhere in the back of Bulfinch, in a part Lillian had not gotten to, there is an obscure (abstruse, arcane, shadowy, and even hidden) version of Proserpine in he Underworld in which a tired Jewish Ceres schleps through the outskirts of Tartarus, an ugly village of tired whores who must double as laundresses and barbers, a couple of saloons, a nearly empty five-and-dime, and people too poor to pull up stakes. In this version, Ceres looks all over town for her Proserpine, who crossed the River Cyane in a pretty sailboat with Pluto, having had the good sense to come to an understanding with the king early on. Pluto and Proserpine picnic in a charming park, twinkling lights overhead and handsome wide benches like the ones in Central Park. When Ceres comes, tripping a little on her hem as she walks through the soft grass, muttering and trying to yank Proserpine to her feet so they can start the long trip home to Enna and daylight (which has lost much of its luster, now that Proserpine is queen of all she surveys), the girl does not jump up at the sight of her mother, but takes her time handing out the sandwiches and pours cups of sweetened tea for the three of them. She lays a nicely ironed napkin in her lap and another in the lap of her new husband, the king. Proserpine does not eat the pomegranate seeds by mistake, or in a moment of desperate hunger, or fright, or misunderstanding. She takes the pomegranate slice out of her husband’s dark and glittering hand and pulls the seeds into her open, laughing mouth; she eats only six seeds because her mother knocks it out of her hand before she can swallow the whole sparkling red cluster.
“We have to get home,” Ceres says.
“I am home,” her daughter says.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“But in the morning everything can, and must, be seen. Daylight takes us; it peels us like fruit.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“Literature is one of the best allies of virtue and promoters of happiness.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“[...] und sie hört, wie er sich in sein Doppelbett legt, auf seine Seite, da er nicht auf Helens Seite schlafen kann, wo er heimlich drei ihrer bestickten Kissen arrangiert hat und sich zum Schlafen ihnen zuwendet, ein Arm um das mittlere Kissen gelegt, den anderen unter dem Kopf, wobei seine Hand wie zum Schutz auf seiner Stirn ruht.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“Eviction," Frieda said. "You can't pay, you can't stay." She said in Yiddish, "Es iz shver tzu makhen a leben." It's hard to make a living.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
“...as he cannot sleep on Helen's side, which is where he has secretly arranged three of her embroidered pillows, and sleeps facing them, one arm around the middle pillow, the other curled under his head, his hand resting on his brow as if for protection.”
― Amy Bloom, quote from Away
Amy Bloom
Born place: in The United States
Born date January 1, 1953
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“...steeped like a teabag in aristocratic pretensions...”
― Philip Roth, quote from I Married a Communist
“He was forty, which is the most frightening age in life. You don't feel sorry for the old, because they are old already; you don't feel sorry for the dead, because they are dead already. But you do feel sorry for those approaching old age, those approaching death. Forty! At fairgrounds you see roller coasters dashing up a steep slope followed by a steep drop and then another ascent. At the top of the slope, or rather just before the top, the vehicle has used up all the energy it acquired in the descent and it slows down and hesitates as if the top were unattainable, as it it were terrified of the approaching plunge. The man approaching forty is in a similar state of hesitation and uncertainty; his pace slackens, he is paralyzed by the approaching summit and the descent he cannot see but knows lies just ahead.”
― Pitigrilli, quote from Cocaine
“Caelen?”
“Aye, lass?”
“You were right.”
“What was I right about?”
“Kissing. ’Tis a most wondrous thing.”
She could sense his smile.”
― Maya Banks, quote from Never Love a Highlander
“The me inside this shell is still me. What defines me? Skin? You know you can change that with the wave of a laser. Muscle? EMS can build that. Fat? It can fade away with freezing. I hope I'm more than that. Than this. That I am what I think, what I believe. What I feel.”
― Lissa Price, quote from Enders
“There was no harm done; and what would a Resurrection be without a few laughs?”
― Clive Barker, quote from Books of Blood: Volume One
The New York Trilogy
Women
Nevermore
Kindred
The Rise of Nine
The Long Dark Tea-Ti...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.
