“Four A.M. and the darkness had a quality of inexorability and menace as though it would never lift, as though, without anyone noticing it, the dawn of the day before had been the beginning of the last light ever in the history of the world.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Blessings
“Mrs. Blessing was surprised at how fluently she lied, much better than she’d done it years before, when it had been so much more important, at least to her. She realized that lying was easier than telling the truth because it had such nice smooth edges, not jagged with impossibility and inconvenience the way the truth so often was.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Blessings
“She had filled her days mourning that shadow life, and it had no more meaning than the chattering of monkeys. Instead, these last few weeks, she had seen what might have been had she not felt perpetually done out of something better.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Blessings
“Anyone familiar with the love affairs between men and women could have told them that theirs would soon be over.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Blessings
“It was a kind of circular thing: to be the kind of person who would have taken Faith in, he had to be the kind of person who would take her back.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Blessings
“He’d had a dog once, in that way he’d had everything in his childhood, ordinary but a lot less lasting.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Blessings
“It was a puzzle to her, how eagerly she’d rushed into life when she was eighteen or twenty, and in what a desultory fashion it had dragged out ever since.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Blessings
“The curse of having young people about the house was that they were always so redolent of possibility.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Blessings
“He was quiet and thoughtful, letting her do all the talking until she would reach one of her acerbic pitches and he would murmur, "You don't really mean that." But he had never seemed put off.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Blessings
“He realized that there was a point to that ungainly empty area between the human shoulder and chin: it was the perfect place to rest an infant.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Blessings
“He couldn't remember at first where he was, just knew by the fragile fog of the summer light that it was early, that his alarm clock would sleep longer than he had.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Blessings
“The girl was huddled against the door on her side now, all folded in upon herself like an old woman, or like a child who'd fallen asleep on a long journey; she heard the sounds of him as if they were musical notes, each distinct and clear, and her shoulders moved slightly beneath her shirt, and her hands were jammed between her knees.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Blessings
“A word about my personal philosophy. It is anchored in optimism. It must be, for optimism brings with it hope, a future with a purpose, and therefore, a will to fight for a better world. Without this optimism, there is no reason to carry on. If we think of the struggle as aclimb up a mountain, then we must visualize a mountain with no top. We see a top, but when we finall yreach it, the overcast rises and we find ourselves merely on a bluff. The mountain continues on up. Now we see the "real" top ahead of us, and strive for it, only to find we've reached another bluff, the top still above us. And so it goes on, interminably.
Knowing that the mountain has no top, that it is a perpetual quest from plateau to plateau, the question arises, "Why the struggle, the conflict, the heartbreak, the danger, the sacrifice. Why the constant climb?" Our answer is the same as that which a real mountain climber gives when he is asked why he does what he does. "Because it's there." Because life is there ahead of you and either one tests oneself in its challenges or huddles in the valleys of a dreamless day-to-day existence whose only purpose is the preservation of a illusory security and safety. The latter is what the vast majority of people choose to do, fearing the adventure into the known. Paradocically, they give up the dream of what may lie ahead on the heighs of tomorrow for a perpetual nightmare - an endless succession of days fearing the loss of a tenuous security.”
― Saul D. Alinsky, quote from Rules for Radicals: A Pragmatic Primer for Realistic Radicals
“She was the split-second experience that changes everything.; the car smash; the letter we shouldn't have opened; the lump in the breast or groin; the blinding flash. On my well-ordered stage-set the lights were up, and maybe at last I was waiting in the wings.”
― Josephine Hart, quote from Damage
“May your criminal enjoyments vanish as a shadow! may your ill-gotten wealth leave you without a resource; and may you yourself remain alone and deserted, to learn the vanity of these things, which now divert you from better pursuits!”
― Antoine François Prévost, quote from Manon Lescaut
“There was... her capacity to believe. There was as well her capacity to be deceived, since you can't have one without the other...”
― Alice McDermott, quote from Charming Billy
“Always remember that your future is determined by what you do today, not tomorrow.”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki, quote from Rich Dad's Retire Young, Retire Rich: How to Get Rich Quickly and Stay Rich Forever!
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.