“At bottom, you see, we are not Homo sapiens as all. Our core is madness. The prime directive is murder. What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle. And that is what the Pulse exposed five days ago.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“Man has come to dominate the planet thanks to two essential traits. One is intelligence. The other has been the absolute willingness to kill anyone and anything that gets in his way.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“This is how a man looks when he's deciding that the risk of death is better than the risk of change.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“He said the mind can calculate, but the spirit yearns, and the heart knows what the heart knows.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“Clay said, "If they have flashlights like us, we can almost assume-"
"We can't assume anything," [Alice] said restlessly, querulously. "My father says assume makes an ass out of you and me. Get it, u and-"
"I get it," Clay said.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“Although neither the Freudians nor the Jungians come right out and say it, they strongly suggest that we may have a core, a single basic carrier wave, or-to use language with which Jordan is comfortable-a single line of written code which cannot be stripped.'
'The PD,' Jordan said. 'The prime directive'.
'Yes,' the Head agreed. 'At bottom, you see, we are not Homo sapiens at all. Our core is madness. The prime directive is murder. What Darwin was too polite to say, my friends, is that we came to rule the earth not because we were the smartest, or even the meanest, but because we have always been the craziest, most murderous motherfuckers in the jungle.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“Three days ago we not only ruled the earth, we had survivor's guilt about all the other species we'd wiped out on our climb to the nirvana of round-the-clock cable news and microwave popcorn. Now we're the Flashlight People.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“Leave it at this: man has come to dominate the planet thanks to two essential traits. One is intelligence. The other has been the absolute willingness to kill anyone and anything that get in his way.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“Can a mordern city burn,' he asked Tom. 'One made mostly of concrete and metal and glass? Could it burn the way Chicago did after Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicked over the lantern?”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“It would occur to him later that the body knows how to fight when it has to. That it’s a secret the body keeps, just as it does the secrets of how to run or jump a creek or throw a fuck or—quite likely—die when there’s no other choice. That under conditions of extreme stress it simply takes over and does what needs doing while the brain stands off to one side, unable to do anything but whistle and tap its foot”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“At half past three, in the ditch of the night, Alice said: “Oh, Mummy, too bad! Fading roses, this garden’s over.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“It'll be all right, Clay. Really." "So you say, but you have a persecution complex and delusions of grandeur." "That's true," Tom said, "but they're balanced out by poor self-image and ego menstruation at roughly six week intervals...”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“That tight little accent grated on Clay’s frayed nerves. He thought that if it had been a fart, it would have been the kind that comes out sounding like a party-horn blown by a kid with asthma.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“He did it with a teacher's natural assumptions: lecturing was his responsibility, interruption his privilege.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“En el fondo no somos homo sapiens, pues nuestro núcleo es la locura, y la directiva primordial, el asesinato. Lo que Darwin fue demasiado educado para expresar, amigos míos, es que no llegamos a dominar el mundo porque seamos los más inteligentes ni los más malvados, sino porque siempre hemos sido los cabrones más chiflados y asesinos de toda la selva.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“His cock swung from side to side like the pendulum of a grandfather clock on speed.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“have no interest in handing down an indictment of mankind. If I did, I’d point out that for every Michelangelo there’s a Marquis de Sade, for every Gandhi an Eichmann, for every Martin Luther King an Osama bin Laden. Leave it at this: man has come to dominate the planet thanks to two essential traits. One is intelligence. The other has been the absolute willingness to kill anyone and anything that gets in his way.” He”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“La inteligencia humana terminó por imponerse al instinto asesino, y la razón sofocó los impulsos más dementes de los hombres.”
― Stephen King, quote from Cell
“[He] understood the people in a new way...The people is not everyone who speaks our language, nor yet the elect marked by the fiery stamp of genius. Not by birth, not by the work of one's hands, not by the wings of education is one elected into the people.
But by one's inner self.
Everyone forges his inner self year after year.
One must try to temper, to cut, to polish one's soul so as to become a human being.
And thereby become a tiny particle of one's own people.”
― Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, quote from The First Circle
“Programming in machine code is like eating with a toothpick.”
― quote from Code
“Half the world's work's done by hopeless neurotics.”
― Pat Barker, quote from The Eye in the Door
“I lowered my face, took two more steps—and that was when I spotted Coach Bobby and his buddies in a Ford Expedition. Sigh. All four of them were there: Assistant Coach Pat drove, Coach Bobby was in the passenger seat, the other two slabs of beef sat in the back. I took out my mobile phone and hit the speed-dial button one. Win answered on the first ring. “Articulate,” Win said. That’s how he always answers the phone, even when he can clearly see on the caller ID that it’s me, and yes, it is annoying. “You better circle back,” I said. “Oh,” Win said, his voice kid-on-Christmas-morning happy, “goodie, goodie.”
― Harlan Coben, quote from Long Lost
“No intentaré describir los sentimientos con que contemplaba aquello. El asombro, naturalmente, predominaba sobre los demás. Legrand parecía exhausto por la excitación, y no profirió más que algunas palabras.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from Der Goldkäfer
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.