“The secret to not being afraid is to understand what scares you”
― quote from Countdown
“There are always scary things happening in the world. There are always wonderful things happening. And it's up to you to decide how you're going to approach the world...how you're going to live in it, and what you're going to do."
—Jo Ellen Chapman”
― quote from Countdown
“I feel sorry for anybody who would let hate wrap them up. Ain't no such thing as I can hate anybody and hope to see God's face.
—Fannie Lou Townsend Hamer”
― quote from Countdown
“A hero can be afraid, but a hero never runs away.”
― quote from Countdown
“Never talk back to a teacher. Teachers are like God. Actually, teachers are God's boss.”
― quote from Countdown
“(Baudelaire) had descended to the bottom of the inexhaustible mine, had picked his way along abandoned or unexplored galleries, and had finally reached those districts of the soul where the monstrous vegetations of the sick mind flourish. There, near the breeding ground of intellectuals aberrations and disease of the mind - the mysterious tetanus, the burning fever of lust, the thyphoids and yellow fevers of crime – he had found, hatching in the dismal forcing-house of ennui, the frightening climacteric of thoughts and emotions.”
― Joris-Karl Huysmans, quote from Against Nature
“Your cynicism lies in your willing abuse of others to consolidate your superiority over them. My cynicism is in regard to humanity’s wilful blindness with respect to its own extinction.’
‘Without that wilful blindness there is naught but despair.’
‘Oh, I am not that cynical. In fact, I do not agree at all. Maybe when the wilful blindness runs its inevitable course, there will be born wilful wisdom, the revelation of seeing things as they are.’
‘Things? To which things are you referring, old man?’
‘Why, that everything of true value is, in fact, free.”
― Steven Erikson, quote from Reaper's Gale
“But you can’t change the world on the honor system. Shoot, anybody knows that. Leave people on the honor system, they don’t do it. As soon as you look away, they just don’t. I mean, look what happened.”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, quote from Pay It Forward
“Encounters between people, it often seems to me, are like trains passing at breakneck speed in the night. We cast fleeting looks at the passengers sitting behind dull glass in dim light, who disappear from our field of vision almost before we perceive them. Was it really a man and a woman who flashed past like phantoms, who came out of nothing into the empty dark, without meaning or purpose? Did they know each other? Did they talk? Laugh? Cry? People will say: That's how it is when strangers pass one another in rain and wind and there might be something in the comparison. But we sit opposite people for longer, we eat and work together, lie next to each other, live under the same roof. Where is the haste? Yet everything that gives the illusion of permanence, familiarity, and intimate knowledge: isn't it a deception invented to reassure, with which we try to conceal and ward off the flickering, disturbing haste because it could be impossible to live with all the time. Isn't every exchange of looks between people like the ghostly brief meeting of eyes between travellers passing one another, intoxicated by the inhuman speed and the shock of air pressure that makes everything shudder and clatter? Don't our looks bounce off others, as in the hasty encounter of the night, and leave us with nothing but conjectures, slivers of thoughts and imagined qualities? Isn't it true that it's not people who meet, but rather the shadows cast by their imaginations?”
― Pascal Mercier, quote from Night Train to Lisbon
“Why aren't you girls out stealing hubcaps or shoplifting like normal children?”
― Daniel Clowes, quote from Ghost World
Cider With Rosie
The River King
Personal Demons
Heartburn
The Shadow of the Be...
SongmasterBookQuoters 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.
