“When you can stop you don't want to, and when you want to stop, you can't...”
― Luke Davies, quote from Candy
“Once upon a time, there was Candy and Dan. Things were very hot that year. All the wax was melting in the trees. He would climb balconies, climb everywhere, do anything for her, oh Danny boy. Thousands of birds, the tiniest birds, adorned her hair. Everything was gold. One night the bed caught fire. He was handsome and a very good criminal. We lived on sunlight and chocolate bars. It was the afternoon of extravagant delight. Danny the daredevil. Candy went missing. The days last rays of sunshine cruise like sharks. I want to try it your way this time. You came into my life really fast and I liked it. We squelched in the mud of our joy. I was wet-thighed with surrender. Then there was a gap in things and the whole earth tilted. This is the business. This, is what we're after. With you inside me comes the hatch of death. And perhaps I'll simply never sleep again. The monster in the pool. We are a proper family now with cats and chickens and runner beans. Everywhere I looked. And sometimes I hate you. Friday -- I didn't mean that, mother of the blueness. Angel of the storm. Remember me in my opaqueness. You pointed at the sky, that one called Sirius or dog star, but on here on earth. Fly away sun. Ha ha fucking ha you are so funny Dan. A vase of flowers by the bed. My bare blue knees at dawn. These ruffled sheets and you are gone and I am going to. I broke your head on the back of the bed but the baby he died in the morning. I gave him a name. His name was Thomas. Poor little god. His heart pounds like a voodoo drum.”
― Luke Davies, quote from Candy
“When you think you are in love, you don't want to know about the things that could end it.”
― Luke Davies, quote from Candy
“Some people are attracted to sickness, to the kind of madness where sparks fly
off the head, to the incoherence of despair, masked by nervous energy, which winds up looking like bewildered joy.”
― Luke Davies, quote from Candy
“Comfort is beauty muted by heroin. Sadness is beauty drained by lack of it.”
― Luke Davies, quote from Candy
“And I come to realise that all my small todays, the way I act, will lead into my tomorrows.”
― Luke Davies, quote from Candy
“I am so far removed, from everything, that I can’t even cry. There’s a chasm between me, where I am, and the world I am in. The world I move my feet through. The atmosphere I breathe is like golden syrup, twenty-seven atmospheres thick. I’m wading through the world, consumed with … consumed. And I’m wading through the swamp that my body has become.”
― Luke Davies, quote from Candy
“I'm hurling all the little joys against the greater sadness. The sadness is a giant weight. It presses down. Its mean: "What's the point?”
― Luke Davies, quote from Candy
“Drought brings out the worst in us and it's easy to hate your fellow human beings.”
― Luke Davies, quote from Candy
“I can no longer cry. I groan a few times. Through the slits that are my eyes, I stare at my shoes, at the gray swirls of the concrete floor, at the bright orange lid of my syringe. And I realize—it’s a kind of horror—that this is my life.
And I can’t stop. I just can’t stop. I can’t stop anymore.”
― Luke Davies, quote from Candy
“Problems With Detachable Heads: Part 1”
― Luke Davies, quote from Candy
“Hive Queen: They never know anything. They don't have enough years in their little lives to come to an understanding of anything at all. And yet they think they understand. From earliest childhood, they delude themselves into thinking they comprehend the world, while all that's really going on is that they've got some primitive assumptions and prejudices. As they get older they learn a more elevated vocabulary in which to express their mindless pseudo- knowledge and bully other people into accepting their prejudices as if they were truth, but it all amounts to the same thing. Individually, human beings are all dolts.
Pequenino: While collectively...
Hive Queen: Collectively, they're a collection of dolts. But in all their scurrying around and pretending to be wise, throwing out idiotic half-understood theories about this and that, one or two of them will come up with some idea that is just a little bit closer to the truth than what was already known. And in a sort of fumbling trial and error, about half the time the truth actually rises to the top and becomes accepted by people who still don't understand it, who simply adopt it as a new prejudice to be trusted blindly until the next dolt accidentally comes up with an improvement.>
Pequenino: So you're saying that no one is ever individually intelligent, and groups are even stupider than individuals-- and yet by keeping so many fools engaged in pretending to be intelligent, they still come up with some of the same results that an intelligent species would come up with.
Hive Queen: Exactly.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Xenocide
“Pretending to care what men think is an art. It takes moments to learn, but lifetimes to master. I’d like to believe I’m an expert.”
― Dennis Sharpe, quote from Blood & Spirits
“Precautionary measure. With those words any deaths could be justified. Better to destroy your own people than there be a chance a German soldier might find a loaf of bread.”
― Tom Rob Smith, quote from Child 44
“The afrit batted his eyelashes with a ostentatious lack of concern. "Indeed? Have you a name?"
"A name?" I cried. "I have MANY names! I am Bartimaeus! I am Sakhr al-Jinni! I am N'gorso the Mighty and the Serpent of Silver Plumes!"
I paused dramatically. The young man looked blank. "Nope never heard of you. Now if you'll just-”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Golem's Eye
“You said we all want there to be more than this! Well, there's always more than this. There's always something you don't know.”
― Patrick Ness, quote from More Than This
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.