Quotes from City of Saints and Madmen

“Ten years ago, we would have been writing perfect stories, but people's attention spans have become more limited in these, the last days of literacy.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from City of Saints and Madmen

“Perhaps [he had] persevered for too long, in the face of too many obstacles, his hair proof of his tenacity - the stark black streaked with white or, in certain light, stark white shot through with black, each strand of white attributable to the jungle fever (so cold it burned, his skin glacial), each strand of black a testament to being alive afterwards.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from City of Saints and Madmen

“If people were not by nature insane and resistant to self-improvement or therapy,”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from City of Saints and Madmen

“No doubt the detour to deliver Lake had made the sheep late for an appointment.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from City of Saints and Madmen

“Take two pictures representing the same subject; one may be dismissed as illustration if it is dominated by the subject and has no other justification but the subject, the other may be called painting if the subject is completely absorbed in the style, which is its own justification, whatever the subject, and has an intrinsic value.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from City of Saints and Madmen

“When Dradin stopped running he found himself on the fringe of the religious quarter, next to an emaciated macadamia salesman who cracked jokes like nuts.”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from City of Saints and Madmen

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Popular quotes

“Sa zadovoljstvom mislim na Andrića...i kada bih mogao da kažem u samo jednoj reči šta me to tera da pobegnem iz Bosne, rekao bih ti: mržnja.”
― Margaret Mazzantini, quote from Twice Born

“She posed as being more indolent than she felt, for fear of finding herself less able than she could wish.”
― Elizabeth Bowen, quote from The Death of the Heart

“We teach our girls how not to get raped with a sense of doom, a sense that we are fighting a losing battle. When I was writing this novel, friend after friend came to me telling me of something that had happened to them. A hand up their skirt, a boy who wouldn’t take no for an answer, a night where they were too drunk to give consent but they think it was taken from them anyway. We shared these stories with one another and it was as if we were discussing some essential part of being a woman, like period cramps or contraceptives. Every woman or girl who told me these stories had one thing in common: shame. ‘I was drunk . . . I brought him back to my house . . . I fell asleep at that party . . . I froze and I didn’t tell him to stop . . .’ My fault. My fault. My fault. When I asked these women if they had reported what had happened to the police, only one out of twenty women said yes. The others looked at me and said, ‘No. How could I have proved it? Who would have believed me?’ And I didn’t have any answer for that.”
― Louise O'Neill, quote from Asking For It

“The guys were totally skuzzy, grinning horribly, showing holes where teeth should be.
“Boys, God doesn’t like you,” Fang intoned behind them.
Whaaat? I thought, dumbfounded.
“Wha!” they said, whirling.
At that moment, Fang snapped out his huge wings and shone the penlight under his chin so it raked his cheekbones and eyes. My mouth dropped open. He looked like the angel of death.
His dark wings filled the hallway almost to the ceiling, and he moved them up and down. “God doesn’t like bad people,” he said, using a really weird, deep voice.
“What the heck?” one of the squatters murmured shallowly, his mouth slack, his eyes bugging out of his head.
I whipped my own wings open. Fun, anyway.
“This was a test,” I said, using my best spooky voice. “And guess what? You both failed.”
The bums stopped dead, looks of horror and amazement on their faces.
Then Fang growled, “Rowr!” He stepped forward, sweeping his wings up and down: the avenging demon. I almost cracked up.
“Rowr!” I said myself, shaking my wings out.
“Ahhhhh!” the guys yelled, backpedaling fast. Unfortunately, they were standing at the top of the staircase. They fell awkwardly, trying to grab each other, and rolled down two flights like lumpy bags of potatoes, shrieking the whole way.
Fang and I slapped each other a quick high five—and we were out of there, jack.”
― James Patterson, quote from School's Out - Forever

“Sarah's friendship was one of my most treasured possessions.”
― Dani Atkins, quote from Fractured

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About BookQuoters

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.