“None of us truly knows what we'll do when the circumstances become so overwhelming and complex that we can't even tell right from wrong.”
― Lurlene McDaniel, quote from Breathless
“But they can't know how the dark space inside me is growing. I lie to them. I can't get out of the dark hole. 'Peace is here' it whispers.”
― Lurlene McDaniel, quote from Breathless
“Most people believe they have a clear idea of what's right and wrong. Many say they know how they'll act, or how they'll handle an extreme situation. But to be honest, no one knows. Not really. Even if you say, 'I'll never do this or that.' it actually might not be true. Because no one of us truly knows what we'll do when the circumstances become so overwhelming and complex that we can't even tell right from wrong. And then there are the totally unforeseen situations, when life deals cards you never expected, or when something's that's considered wrong morphs into something right and your mind determines that what once was the rule is not written in stone.”
― Lurlene McDaniel, quote from Breathless
“In truth, I don't want to be there. I don't want to see the light go out of my brother's eyes.”
― Lurlene McDaniel, quote from Breathless
“Everybody dies; that's a fact. Sometimes it blindsides people. Sometimes people get a glimpse of the big picture and decide to cheat.”
― Lurlene McDaniel, quote from Breathless
“Foreknowledge is a burden, a weight I can hardly bear. Maybe that’s why God keeps the future hidden from us. If I knew I would have a terrible accident, would I live my life trying to avoid it? Would I lock myself inside a room being safe? Or would I go outside and live day to day”
― Lurlene McDaniel, quote from Breathless
“Esto es lo que me pasó a mí. Pensé que tenía normas. Yo creía en mis absolutos. Lo hice para la mayoría de las situaciones. Entonces no lo hice. Conforme pasó el tiempo, mi mundo se volvió gris y mis absolutos se oscurecieron. El bien y el mal se
disolvieron en lo que sabía que tenía que hacer.”
― Lurlene McDaniel, quote from Breathless
“La mayoría de las personas creen que tienen una idea clara de lo que es correcto e incorrecto. Muchos dicen saber cómo actuar, o cómo manejar una situación extrema. Pero para ser honestos, nadie lo sabe. No de verdad. Incluso si dicen: "!Nunca voy a hacer esto o aquello¡" eso en realidad puede no ser cierto. Porque ninguno de nosotros realmente sabe lo que vamos a hacer cuando las circunstancias son tan abrumadoras y complejas que ni siquiera podemos distinguir el bien del mal. Y luego están las situaciones totalmente imprevistas, cuando la vida maneja cartas que nunca esperaste, o cuando algo que consideras malo se transforma en algo correcto y tu mente determina que lo que una vez fue una regla, no está escrita en piedra. Incluso si nunca te pasó, apuesto a que entenderás exactamente de lo que estoy hablando.”
― Lurlene McDaniel, quote from Breathless
“Medals hang from his neck in a glittering array, like jewelry, like starts that will now go out because their sun no longer burns.”
― Lurlene McDaniel, quote from Breathless
“Quiero tener una opinión cuando todo esto termine. Quiero decidir. No quiero que el cáncer decida por mi. Mi cuerpo. Mi elección.”
― Lurlene McDaniel, quote from Breathless
“Was it possible? She had taken me with her hoping that as a punishment my parents would not send me to middle school? Or had she brought me back in such a hurry so that I would avoid punishment? Or - I wonder today - did she want at different moments both things?”
― quote from My Brilliant Friend
“However, questions arise. Are there people who aren't naive realists, or special situations in which naive realism disappears? My theory—the self-model theory of subjectivity—predicts that as soon as a conscious representation becomes opaque (that is, as soon as we experience it as a representation), we lose naive realism. Consciousness without naive realism does exist. This happens whenever, with the help of other, second-order representations, we become aware of the construction process—of all the ambiguities and dynamical stages preceding the stable state that emerges at the end. When the window is dirty or cracked, we immediately realize that conscious perception is only an interface, and we become aware of the medium itself. We doubt that our sensory organs are working properly. We doubt the existence of whatever it is we are seeing or feeling, and we realize that the medium itself is fallible. In short, if the book in your hands lost its transparency, you would experience it as a state of your mind rather than as an element of the outside world. You would immediately doubt its independent existence. It would be more like a book-thought than a book-perception. Precisely this happens in various situations—for example, In visual hallucinations during which the patient is aware of hallucinating, or in ordinary optical illusions when we suddenly become aware that we are not in immediate contact with reality. Normally, such experiences make us think something is wrong with our eyes. If you could consciously experience earlier processing stages of the representation of the book In your hands, the image would probably become unstable and ambiguous; it would start to breathe and move slightly. Its surface would become iridescent, shining in different colors at the same time. Immediately you would ask yourself whether this could be a dream, whether there was something wrong with your eyes, whether someone had mixed a potent hallucinogen into your drink. A segment of the wall of the Ego Tunnel would have lost its transparency, and the self-constructed nature of the overall flow of experience would dawn on you. In a nonconceptual and entirely nontheoretical way, you would suddenly gain a deeper understanding of the fact that this world, at this very moment, only appears to you.”
― Thomas Metzinger, quote from The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self
“If there is anything of which I am certain in life it is that I shall never exchange the liberty of my exile for the vile parody of home.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, quote from The Real Life of Sebastian Knight
“Quite simply, the key to being a happy non-smoker is to remove the desire to smoke. With no desire to smoke, it takes no Willpower not to do so.”
― Allen Carr, quote from The Easy Way to Stop Smoking: Join the Millions Who Have Become Nonsmokers Using the Easyway Method
“...And he said nothing. Just put his arms around her more closely as the whole heart clinic and their friends and relations danced to the music of "Hey Jude".”
― Maeve Binchy, quote from Heart and Soul
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.