“A thousand Dreams within me softly burn:
From time to time my heart is like some oak
Whose blood runs golden where a branch is torn.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Complete Works
“I have stretched ropes from steeple to steeple; Garlands from window to window; Golden chains from star to star ... And I dance.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Complete Works
“Evening prayer
I spend my life sitting, like an angel in a barber's chair,
Holding a beer mug with deep-cut designs,
My neck and gut both bent, while in the air
A weightless veil of pipe smoke hangs.
Like steaming dung within an old dovecote
A thousand Dreams within me softly burn:
From time to time my heart is like some oak
Whose blood runs golden where a branch is torn.
And then, when I have swallowed down my Dreams
In thirty, forty mugs of beer, I turn
To satisfy a need I can't ignore,
And like the Lord of Hyssop and of Myrrh
I piss into the skies, a soaring stream
That consecrates a patch of flowering fern.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Complete Works
“Ciel ! Amour ! Liberté ! Quel rêve, ô pauvre Folle!
Tu te fondais à lui comme une neige au feu”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Complete Works
“These verses believe; they love; they hope; that is all.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Complete Works
“Eternas ondinas,
dividid el agua fina.
Venus, del azul hermana,
conmueve las puras aguas.
Judío errante en Noruega,
dime, ¿cómo nieva?
Viejos exiliados tiernos,
contadme el océano.
YO-. Nunca esas bebidas puras,
ni esas flores de florero,
ni leyendas, ni figuras,
saciarme pudieron.
Coplista, tu ahijada
es mi sed que se desboca,
hidra íntima sin bocas
que roe y devasta.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from Complete Works
“My husband claims I have an unhealthy obsession with secondhand bookshops. That I spend too much time daydreaming altogether. But either you intrinsically understand the attraction of searching for hidden treasure amongst rows of dusty shelves or you don't; it's a passion, bordering on a spiritual illness, which cannot be explained to the unaffected.”
― Kathleen Tessaro, quote from Elegance
“Those moments aren't ours any more. They're shut up in a box, buried at the back of a cupboard, out of reach. They're frozen like on a postcard or a calendar. The colours will end up disappearing, fading. They're forbidden to our memories and our words.”
― Delphine de Vigan, quote from No and Me
“And I got a strong feeling of the passage of time. Not the time of clouds and sun and rain and the moving stars that adorn the night, not spring when its time comes or fall, not the time that makes leaves bud on branches and then tears them off or folds and unfolds and colors the flowers, but the time inside me, the time you can't see but it molds us. The time that rolls on and on in people's hearts and makes them roll along with it and gradually changes us inside and out and makes us what we'll be on our dying day.”
― Mercè Rodoreda, quote from The Time of the Doves
“It was as if Simon had become my nightlight; even when he wasn't with me, he was illuminating the world so that I no longer feared it.”
― Tricia Rayburn, quote from Siren
“It's more than the color.' He lifts my chin a little and our eyes reconnect. 'They have a dark line around the edge of the iris, a thing of natural beauty that brings your eyes to life. And they are intense; they shine like they're reflecting the light of a thousand stars, and they reflec...t me, too, and they make me want to be everything to you. And when you get angry, they dance a little, and every time it weakens my heart and makes me smile.”
― David Cristofano, quote from The Girl She Used to Be
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.