“It would be nice to avoid the world, to leave it and all its threats and unhappiness. Not to die or anything like that, but to find a place of solitude and solace.”
― Robert Cormier, quote from Beyond the Chocolate War
“Sometimes I wake up at night in a panic. Wondering: What will my life be like? And sometimes I even wonder: Who am I? What am I doing here, on this planet, in this city, in this house? And it gives me the shivers, makes me panic.”
― Robert Cormier, quote from Beyond the Chocolate War
“What have I done, Obie?"
Obie flung his hand in the air, the gesture encompassing all the rotten things that had occur under Archie's command, at Archie's direction. The ruined kids, the capsized hopes. Renault last fall and poor Tubs Casper and all the others including even the faculty. Like Brother Eugene.
"You know what you've done, Archie. I don't need to draw up a list-"
"You blame me for everything, right, Obie? You and Carter and all the others. Archie Costello, the bad guy. The villain. Archie, the bastard. Trinity would be such a beautiful place without Archie Costello. Right, Obie? But it's not me, Obie, it's not me...."
"Not you?" Obie cried, fury gathering in his throat, his chest, his guts. "What the hell do you mean, not you? This could have been a beautiful place to be, Archie. A beautiful time for all of us. Christ, who else, if not you?"
"Do you really want to know who?"
"Okay, who then?" Impatient with his crap, the old Archie crap.
"It's you, Obie. You and Carter and Bunting and Leon and everybody. But especially you, Obie. Nobody forced you to do anything, buddy. Nobody made you join the Vigils. Nobody twisted your arm to make you secretary of the Vigils. Nobody pain you to keep a notebook with all that crap about the students, all their weaknesses, soft points. The notebook made your job easier, didn't it, Obie? And what was your job? Finding the victims. You found them, Obie. You found Renault and Tubs Casper and Gendreau-the first one, remember, when we were sophomores?-how you loved it all, didn't you Obie?" Archie flicked a finger against the metal of the car, and the ping was like a verbal exclamation mark. "Know what, Obie? You could have said no anytime, anytime at all. But you didn't...." Archie's voice was filled with contempt, and he pronounced Obie's name as if it were something to be flushed down a toilet.
"Oh, I'm an easy scapegoat, Obie. For you and everybody else at Trinity. Always have been. But you had free choice, buddy. Just like Brother Andrew always says in Religion. Free choice, Obie, and you did the choosing....”
― Robert Cormier, quote from Beyond the Chocolate War
“Angry at his parents and all grown-ups who thought that school life was a lark, a good time, the best years of your life with a few test and quizzes thrown in to keep you on your toes. Bullshit. There was nothing good about it. Tests were daily battles in the larger war of school. School meant rules and orders and commands. To say nothing of homework.”
― Robert Cormier, quote from Beyond the Chocolate War
“Ray Bannister started to build the guillotine the day Jerry Renault returned to Monument.”
― Robert Cormier, quote from Beyond the Chocolate War
Robert Cormier
Born place: in Leominster, Massachusetts, The United States
Born date January 17, 1925
See more on GoodReads
“mine is not the only family to consider. There are many others that may die if none of us were to fight. You see how many volunteer to go up against the enemy now? Me alone in this room of hundreds. If no one fights, then I will have the satisfaction of saving only my family above the thousands more. I could not live with that. If I lead my men, if we assist the Amerikanos in our own way, then many more may be saved. You yourself saw how being selfish served you. Only your family became rich, the others in your village lost everything.” Mang”
― Tess Uriza Holthe, quote from When the Elephants Dance
“when the Vietnamese came to the United States they often faced prejudice from everyone—White, Black, and Hispanics. But they didn’t beg for handouts and often took the lowest jobs offered. Even well-educated individuals didn’t mind sweeping floors if it was a paying job. Today many of these same Vietnamese are property owners and entrepreneurs. That’s the message I try to get across to the young people. The same opportunities are there, but we can’t start out as vice president of the company. Even if we landed such a position, it wouldn’t do us any good anyway because we wouldn’t know how to do our work. It’s better to start where we can fit in and then work our way up.”
― Ben Carson, quote from Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story
“Being female in this world means having been robbed of the potential for human choice by men who love to hate us. One does does not make choices in freedom. Instead, one conforms in body type and behavior and values to become an object of male sexual desire, which requires an abandonment of a wide-ranging capacity for choice...
Men too make choices. When will they choose not to despise us?”
― Andrea Dworkin, quote from Intercourse
“You haven't stopped smiling since you came in."
"You want me to yell?"
"No, no," Buddy hastily assured him. "You just keep right on smiling." He picked delicately at the remaining pie. "You sure did sleep late today."
Tate grinned at him. "Yep."
"Didn't go fishing, either."
"Nope."
"Sure was a lot of tromping around going on upstairs a few minutes ago. What were you doing?"
"Just moving a few things." Tate took a drink of coffee.
"What things?"
He was beginning to wish he'd strangled Buddy at birth. "My things."
"Were you moving them somewhere in particular, or just dragging them up and down the hall for the exercise?"
Tate ground his teeth together. "I was moving them to Abby's room."
"Oh." Buddy gave a half grin. "Can I have some money?"
"No." Tate glared at him.
"Well, it was worth a shot. I should have asked while you were still smiling.”
― Katherine Allred, quote from What Price Paradise
“How was Jerusalem conquered? God “compacted Himself” so as to leave room for the world, and left a very small opening, the size of a small needle, through which the light could shine in. For this purpose, He sowed a series of quanta within the emptiness, created matter out of nothing, and expanded it many times over. He merged protons and anti-protons, neutrons and anti-neutrons, and breathed life into the photons that were produced from this merger.”
― Nathan Erez, quote from The Kabbalistic Murder Code
Tick Tock
Second Chance Summer
Oh. My. Gods.
The Secret Diary of...
American Born Chines...
Undaunted Courage: T...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.
