“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
“The sun was rising in the distance, pulled up by its lazy, invisible string, and the sky was shot through with color. Her hair was washed in gold, her cheeks, in gold, and her eyes were as knowing as a psychic’s.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, quote from A Study in Charlotte
“Many people live and die without ever confronting themselves in the darkness. Pray that one day, you will spin around at the water’s edge, lean over, and be able to count yourself among the lucky.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, quote from Her Body and Other Parties
“Will I begin it? said Doyler laughing. That's all that's in it, he laughing said.
Oh sure that grin. Oh sure that wonderful saucerful grin. Jim sat on the grass and he plucked at the blades. He knew for certain sure that Doyler would be turning from him again. He said, You'll be walking away from me soon, won't you now? There was no answer. Jim plucked the grass and stared beyond where the waves broke on the island shore. He said, I wish you wouldn't Doyler. It does break my heart when you walk away.
Old pal o' me heart, said Doyler.
But already he had turned, and he was walking away. Walking that slow dreadful slope with never a leaf or a stone. Walking; and though Jim tried to keep pace, e could not, and sometimes he called out, Doyler! Doyler! but he never heard or he did not heed, only farther and farther he walked away. And when Jim woke from these dreams, if he did not remember, he knew he had dreamt, for the feeling inside him of not feeling at all. And it was hard then to make his day.”
― Jamie O'Neill, quote from At Swim, Two Boys
“Reaching for his toothbrush, I looked at it and realized he’d been brushing his teeth for somebody else for a long time. I don’t know what possessed me to do it but I dunked it in the toilet. That pleased me so much that I rubbed it around the inside rim. That seemed so pleasant I then scrubbed up under the rim, good and hard, where no toilet brush could’ve reached in weeks.”
― Dorothea Benton Frank, quote from Sullivan's Island
“The first stone, thrown by Hellgiver, crashed through the roof of a dyer's house close to St Brieuc's church and took off the heads of an English man-at-arms and the dyer's wife. A joke went through the garrison that the two bodies were so crushed together by the boulder that they would go on coupling throughout eternity.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from Vagabond
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.