“Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They're its finest fruits. Sometimes the only ones.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Black and Blue
“Maybe when you were a kid you were so unsure of yourself that every school year was a time of reinvention; maybe only adults were stupid enough to think they knew exactly who they were.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Black and Blue
“He had not colored the leaves in yet, and the trunk and its branches looked for the moment less like a tree and more like a great brown river, the Nile, the Amazon, the Benedetto and Flynn river of blood, and there at its isthmus was this one child, so that it seemed that all of these people, from Poland, from Italy, from Ireland and the Bronx and Brooklyn, had come together for no other reason than to someday produce Robert Benedetto, in an event as meant, as important as that one in Bethlehem that he had learned about in catechism class at St. Stannie's.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Black and Blue
“Doesn´t she have diarrhea of the mouth?”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Black and Blue
“Count your blessings, my father always said. It shames you, to count yours by the hardships of other people.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Black and Blue
“The cold in her makes cold in me.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Black and Blue
“I hid my wounds because I was ashamed...but now I know that I was also afraid of being reduced..”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Black and Blue
“Words, words. They mean nothing, less than nothing. I know.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Black and Blue
“...there is a piece of me missing so big that the pain doubles me over, clawing at my gut...”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Black and Blue
“She wants to be someone else, somewhere else, and I can't blame her.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Black and Blue
“There are ways and ways of dying, and some of them leave you walking around.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Black and Blue
“...I had enough of real life everyday to last me forever.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Black and Blue
“Sometimes you say a word so many times that it loses its meaning...”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Black and Blue
“stayed because I thought things would get better, or at least not worse.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Black and Blue
“Girls, in those days, couldn't do anything to you (they couldn't call the lawyers, the tabloids, the cops) except kill themselves or get pregnant. All they had was life: they could augment it, they could bear it away. They could subtract from it or they could add to it; and that was all.”
― Martin Amis, quote from The Information
“Marriage breeds its own special brand of loneliness, and it’s far more cruel. You miss more, because you’ve known more.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from The Aviator's Wife
“There’s something in human nature, I’m beginning to learn, that makes an adult, when speaking to a younger person, magnify the little things and shrink the big ones. It’s like looking—or talking—through a kind of word-telescope that, no matter which end they choose, distorts the truth. Your mistakes are always magnified and your victories shrunken.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from As Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust
“The man stands behind the man.
The seated man thinks,
"For heaven's sake, stop standing behind me.
You are driving me mad. It is February and it is impossible.
Someone has thrown onion skins all over the stairwell. Now I will have to clean them up - though I love to sweep. But still, it is disgusting."
But all he says is "I have to go soon."
Why can't people tell the truth?
It is impossible not to lie.
It is February and not lying is impossible.”
― Maira Kalman, quote from The Principles of Uncertainty
“Oh, but it is bleak!” she murmured. “Suppose we should have to stay here all next winter, too,… and the next! What will become of me, Niel?” There was fear, unmistakable fright in her voice. “You see there is nothing for me to do. I get no exercise. I don’t skate; we didn’t in California, and my ankles are weak. I’ve always danced in the winter, there’s plenty of dancing at Colorado Springs. You wouldn’t believe how I miss it. I shall dance till I’m eighty.… I’ll be the waltzing grandmother! It’s good for me, I need it.” They”
― Willa Cather, quote from A Lost Lady
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.