“There never was a story that was happy through and through.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, quote from Blood Red, Snow White
“He had learned something already in the course of his journey. If you carried a closed wooden box, people want to know what is in it.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, quote from Blood Red, Snow White
“Stories twist and turn and grow and meet and give birth to other stories. Here and there, one story touches another, and a familiar character, sometimes the hero, walks over the bridge from one story into another.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, quote from Blood Red, Snow White
“She risked her life to put your mind at rest,' Evgenia said. 'How great is love!”
― Marcus Sedgwick, quote from Blood Red, Snow White
“You have life written all over you. Some people bear tragedy on their faces; loss, death, whatever it might be. But you have life.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, quote from Blood Red, Snow White
“Slowly he had learned that there is a world beneath the visible one, and that people, some people at least, have a different life, that they carry inside them.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, quote from Blood Red, Snow White
“Love, he decided, is not about how much someone else cares for you, it's about how much you care for someone else.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, quote from Blood Red, Snow White
“The time for princes and tsars and holy madmen was gone.
In its place came a world of war and revolution, of tanks and
telephones, murder and assassination.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, quote from Blood Red, Snow White
“Why were there some people who seemed so sure of themselves that it made him feel small and ignorant by comparison, as if they had a script to life with all the answers on it? He felt he didn't even know the questions.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, quote from Blood Red, Snow White
“And that was how the young writer found love, just when he had stopped looking for it.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, quote from Blood Red, Snow White
“The bear, which by now was as large as the cathedral on Catherine’s canal, rose on its hind legs like a dancing bear in a street market. For a moment the sun was blotted out by its size, and then it fell. As it fell, it came apart. It disintegrated. It fell like brown snow, but each flake was a person. The bear had been one hundred thousand people, and now the people came to earth, tumbling into the snowy streets of the city and picking themselves up, laughing at it all. Far from being hurt, they realised that they felt strong. But, like the bear, they felt hungry. They ran through the streets, swarming like bees, joining others who had emerged when the sun had. It was chaos.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, quote from Blood Red, Snow White
“The time for princes and tsars and grand duchesses and especially holy madmen was gone. In its place came a world of war and revolution, of tanks and telephones, of murder and assassination. The bear had already become what it had been waiting to be, and the men who set it on its journey changed too. Lev became Trotsky, Vladimir took the name Lenin, and they stepped into a bright and furious modern world; blood red, and snow white.”
― Marcus Sedgwick, quote from Blood Red, Snow White
“Blessed be the soul, and the Lord that keeps it in order; blessed be the day, and the Lord that drives it away.”
― Tim Powers, quote from On Stranger Tides
“It used to surprise me, the intensity with which I still remembered these distant memories. But when I entered my fifties...I understood their enduring clarity....In the end, what adds up to a life is nothing more than the accumulation of small daily moments.”
― Alice Steinbach, quote from Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman
“Here is a little boy,” said Bingo, indicating me to the strange lady, “who wets his bed every night. Do you know what I am going to do if you wet your bed again?” she added, turning to me. “I am going to get the Sixth Form to beat you.” The strange lady put on an air of being inexpressibly shocked, and exclaimed “I-should-think-so!” And here occurred one of those wild, almost lunatic misunderstandings which are part of the daily experience of childhood. The Sixth Form was a group of older boys who were selected as having “character” and were empowered to beat smaller boys. I had not yet learned of their existence, and I mis-heard the phrase “the Sixth Form” as “Mrs. Form.” I took it as referring to the strange lady—I thought, that is, that her name was Mrs. Form. It was an improbable name, but a child has 110 judgement in such matters. I imagined, therefore, that it was she who was to be deputed to beat me. It did Dot strike me as strange that this job should be turned over to a casual visitor in no way connected with the school. I merely assumed that “Mrs. Form” was a stern disciplinarian who enjoyed beating people (somehow her appearance seemed to bear this out) and I had an immediate terrifying vision of her arriving for the occasion in full riding kit and armed with a hunting whip. To this day I can feel myself almost swooning with shame as I stood, a very small, round-faced boy in short corduroy knickers, before the two women. I could not speak. I felt that I should die if “Mrs. Form” were to beat me. But my dominant feeling was not fear or even resentment: it was simply shame because one more person, and that a woman, had been told of my disgusting offence.”
― George Orwell, quote from A Collection of Essays
“...a family wanting no more than to live without challenge or drama could easily find a quiet street, and "peace," provided they were fortunate enough to live in a comparatively sheltered and favoured geographical area, and provided they were able to make the mental adjustment to relegate war - and its consequences - into something that happened elsewhere and did not affect them; or something that had happened to them, but between such and such dates, and then taken itself off.”
― Doris Lessing, quote from Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta
“no longer tell if he was upset by being so far”
― Michael Connelly, quote from City of Bones
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.