“What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories?”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“We’re constantly changing facts, rewriting history to make things easier, to make them fit in with our preferred version of events. We do it automatically. We invent memories. Without thinking. If we tell ourselves something happened often enough we start to believe it, and then we can actually remember it.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“It's so difficult, isn't it? To see what's going on when you're in the absolute middle of something? It's only with hindsight we can see things for what they are.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“I want him to be happy. And I want you to be happy, too. Even if you can only find that happiness without me.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“There are memories I am better off without. Things better lost forever.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“I cannot imagine how I will cope when I discover that my life is behind me, has already happened, and I have nothing to show for it. No treasure house of collection, no wealth of experience, no accumulated wisdom to pass on. What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories?”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to my grief. It felt better, somehow, to be helpless. I didn't feel ashamed.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd fought for you. I was weak and stupid.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“Do you trust me?
The question is usually asked before an admission that such trust is misplaced.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“I am an adult, but a damaged one.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“I will never abandon you. I love you too much.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“With him everything is a test, affection is measured, that given weighed against that which has been received, and the balance, more often than not, disappointing him.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“I have no choice but to face whatever my reality has become.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“It’s perfectly possible to hold two opposing points of view in the mind at once, oscillating between them.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“Thoughts race, as if, in a mind devoid of memory, each idea has too much space to grow and move, to collide with others in a shower of sparks before spinning off into its own distance.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“This is dying everyday. Over and over.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“I closed my eyes and he kissed my eyelids, barely brushing them with his lips. I felt safe, at home. I felt as if here, against his body, was the only place in which I belonged. The only place I had ever wanted to be. We lay in silence for a while, holding each other, our skin merging, our breathing synchronized. I felt as if silence might allow the moment to last for ever, which would still not be enough.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“Whatever enjoyment I might have had at the time would disappear overnight like snow melting on a warm roof.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“…I feel like he’s taking advantage of me. Advantage of my illness. He thinks he can rewrite history in any way that he likes and I will never know, never be any the wiser. But I do know. I know exactly what he’s doing. And so I don’t trust him. In the end he is pushing me away, Dr. Nash. Ruining everything.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“I could think of nothing, nothing to say, nothing to feel. My mind was empty.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“these truths are all I have. They are my past. They are what makes me human. Without them, I am nothing. Nothing but an animal.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“It’s not life, it’s just an existence, jumping from one moment to the next with no idea of the past, and no plan for the future.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“There was a letter, tucked among the pictures. It was addressed to Santa Claus and written in blue crayon. The jerky letters danced across the page. He wanted a bike, he said, or a puppy, and promised to be good. It was signed, and he had added his age. Four.
I do not know why, but as I read it, my world seemed to collapse. Grief exploded in my chest like a grenade. I had been feeling calm - not happy, not even resigned, but calm - and that serenity vanished, as if vaporized. Beneath it, I was raw.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“لقد تسربت سنوات عديدة كالرمال من بين أصابعي ولم تترك أي أثر يدل عليها,لم تعد للدقائق وجود في حياتي ولم أعد أملك الا دقات الساعة لتعلمني أن الوقت يمر ويمضي بلا عودة.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“I wonder what I would find if I could go back and decipher the layers, if it were possible to delve into my past that way, but realize that, even if it were possible, it would be futile.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“I am sliding, down,down. Toward blackness, I must not sleep. I must not sleep.I.Must.Not.Sleep.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“ان الناس يغيرون الحقائق علي الدوام,ويعيدون كتابة تاريخهم ليسهلوا الأمور علي أنفسهم ويجعلوها أكثر ملائمة لروايات الأحداث المفضلة لديهم.انهم بفعلون هذا بشكل تلقائي ويخترعون الذكريات من دون تفكير.فان أقنع المرء نفسه بحدوث شئ ما بشكل متكرر بما يكفي لأن يصدقه,فسوف يصدقه فعلا,وهذا ما يجعله يتذكره بعد ذلك.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“Progress? You call this progress?” I was almost shouting now, anger spilled out of me as if I could no longer contain it. “If that’s what it is, then I don’t know if I want it.” The tears were flooding now, uncontrollable. “I don’t want it!” I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to my grief. It felt better, somehow, to be helpless.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“أدركت أنه لم يعد لدي أي طموح بعد الآن,وأنني لم أعد أريد من حياتي سوي أن أشعر بانني انسانة طبيعية وأن أعيش ككل انسان أخر يبني تحربة فوق أخري,وأن يمنح كل يوم يومي التالي شكله ولونه.انني أريد أن أنمو ببطء وأن أتعلم الأشياء وأشكل التجارب.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“أدركت أن الظلام سيخيم قريبا وان الشمس ستغرب وان القمر سيتوسط كبد السماء وبهذا ينتهي يوم آخر وأخسره للأبد!! :(”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
S.J. Watson
Born place: The United Kingdom
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“What would it be like if I had something to defend - a home, a country, a family - and I found myself attacked by these ghostly men, these trusting boys? How do you fight an enemy who fights with neither enmity nor anger but in submission to orders from superiors, without protest and without conscience?”
― Amitav Ghosh, quote from The Glass Palace
“so far remained unbroken. Now my turn had come. In early springtime, when I was just sixteen, my mother took me to the house where she had won her shield so many years before. The Lady Abicel, long dead, had left her house and lands, along with her”
― Catherine M. Wilson, quote from The Warrior's Path
“Alek said, "Do you think I'm being a fool?"
"I think you're trying to do something good. But doing good is rarely easy, and no weapon has ever stopped a war.”
― Scott Westerfeld, quote from Goliath
“We can’t let it be controlled by the sorts of people who believe Voldemort was just some misunderstood sweetie who wanted everybody to be pals.”
― G. Norman Lippert, quote from James Potter and the Hall of Elders' Crossing
“Well," he said slowly, "sometimes there's a passion that comes in its springtime to ill fate or death. And because it ends in its beauty, it's what the harpers sing of and the poets make stories of: the love that escapes the years....
"All or nothing, the true lover says, and that's the truth of it. My love will never die, he says. He claims eternity. And rightly. How can it die when it's life itself? What do we know of eternity but the glimpse we get of it when we enter in that bond?”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from The Other Wind
Withering Tights
Woodcutters
Lola Rose
Lemonade Mouth
The Birth of Tragedy
On the Genealogy of...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.
