Quotes from Damage

“Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.”
― Josephine Hart, quote from Damage

“All damaged people are dangerous. Survival makes them so.' 'Why?' 'Because they have no pity. They know what others can survive, as they did.”
― Josephine Hart, quote from Damage

“They say that childhood forms us, that those early influences are the key to everything. Is the peace of the soul so easily won? Simply the inevitable result of a happy childhood. What makes childhood happy? Parental harmony? Good health? Security? Might not a happy childhood be the worst possible preparation for life? Like leading a lamb to the slaughter.”
― Josephine Hart, quote from Damage

“..I always recognize the foces that will shape my life. I let them do their work. Sometimes they tear through my life like a hurricane. Sometimes they simply shift the ground under me, so that I stand on different earth, and something or someone has been swallowed up. I steady myself, in the earthquate. I lie down, and let the hurricane pass over me. I never fight. Afterwards I look around me, and I say, 'Ah, so this at least is left for me. And that dear person has also survived.' I quietly inscribe on the stone tablet of my heart the name which has gone forever. Th inscription is a thing of agony. Then I start on my way again.”
― Josephine Hart, quote from Damage

“There was a full moon in the starless sky. I thought how rarely I had noticed such things. Some deep failure of the soul perhaps. An inherited emptiness. A nothingness passed from generation to generation. A flaw in the psyche, discovered only by those who suffer by it.”
― Josephine Hart, quote from Damage

“That is my story, simply told. Please do not ask again. I have told you in order to issue a warning. I have been damaged. Damaged people are dangerous. They know they can survive.”
― Josephine Hart, quote from Damage

“Lucky people should hide. Pray the days of wrath do not visit their home.”
― Josephine Hart, quote from Damage

“Our sanity depends essentially on a narrowness of vision--the ability to select the elements vital to survival, while ignoring the great truths.”
― Josephine Hart, quote from Damage

“Was my sin basically one of untruthfulness? Or, more likely, one of cowardice? But the liar knows the truth. The coward knows his fear and runs away.”
― Josephine Hart, quote from Damage

“She was the split-second experience that changes everything.; the car smash; the letter we shouldn't have opened; the lump in the breast or groin; the blinding flash. On my well-ordered stage-set the lights were up, and maybe at last I was waiting in the wings.”
― Josephine Hart, quote from Damage

“What really makes us is beyond grasping. It's way beyond knowing. We give in to love... because it gives us some sense of what is unknowable. Nothing else matters, not at the end.”
― Josephine Hart, quote from Damage

“When we mourn those who die young – those who have been robbed of time – we weep for lost joys. We weep for opportunities and pleasure we ourselves have never known. We feel sure that somehow that young body would have known the yearning delight for which we searched in vain all our lives. We believe that the untried soul, trapped in its young prison, might have flown free and known the joy that we still seek. We say that life is sweet, its satisfactions deep. All this we say, as we sleepwalk our time through years of days and nights. We let time cascade over us like a waterfall, believing it to be never-ending. Yet each day that touches us, and every man in the world, is unique; irredeemable; over. And just another Monday.”
― Josephine Hart, quote from Damage

“The passion that transforms life, and art, did not seem to be mine. But in all essentials, my life was a good performance.”
― Josephine Hart, quote from Damage

“Children are the great gamble. From the moment they are born, our helplessness increases. Instead of being ours to mould and shape after our best knowledge and endeavour, they are themselves. From their birth they are the centre of our lives, and the dangerous edge of existence.”
― Josephine Hart, quote from Damage

“Men and women find all sorts of ways to be together, all sorts of ways. Yours was high and dangerous. Most of us stay on the lower paths.”
― Josephine Hart, quote from Damage

“The day then trapped me in its iron bars of phone calls and meetings, letters to read, letters to write, decisions to make, promises to break.”
― Josephine Hart, quote from Damage

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Popular quotes

“Pająk wysnuwa wszystko ze swojego wnętrza. (...) Nie wszyscy pisarze tak robią. Niektórzy są jak mrówki, pozbierają trochę tu, trochę tam, a potem to, czego tak pracowicie naściągali, uważają za swoje dzieło. Krytycy bez obiekcji wierzą, że niemal wszyscy pisarze zaliczają się do tej właśnie kategorii. Chętnie wskazują, że dana książka "zawiera ślady", "czerpie z", "ma dług wdzięczności wobec" pewnych tytułów lub prądów bądź współczesnych, bądź z historii literatury, i to nawet wtedy, gdy rzeczony autor nigdy nie zbliżył się do wspomnianych pozycji. Krytycy jednak przyjmują niemal za pewnik, że wszyscy pisarze są równie uczeni i w równym stopniu pozbawieni fantazji jak oni sami. Wygląda na to, że za aksjomat przyjęto niemożność powstawania jakichkolwiek oryginalnych impulsów, przynajmniej nie jest to możliwe w żadnym małym kraju, a już z pewnością nie w w naszym. Istnieje jednak również trzecia kategoria pisarzy. Ci, którzy korzystali z Pogotowia Autorskiego, byli jak pszczoły. Zlatywali się, żeby zbierać nektar w różanym ogrodzie Pająka, w ten sposób zdobywali surowiec, lecz większość z nich wkładała wiele trudu i wysiłku w jego przerobienie. Przetrawiali zebrany z róż nektar i przetwarzali go na własny miód.”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Ringmaster's Daughter

“Human curiosity. Such a very interesting thing. Think of what we owe to it throughout history. It is said to be usually associated with the cat. Curiosity killed the cat. But I should say really that the Greeks were the inventors of curiosity.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from Elephants Can Remember

“Shyness is shit. It isn’t cute or feminine or appealing. It’s torment, and it’s shit.”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Bloodchild and Other Stories

“of one hundred movies there's one that is fair, one that's good and ninety eight that are very bad. most movies start badly and steadily get worse”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from The Last Night of the Earth Poems

“Well, I'd find sleeping with you a pleasant thing, but I'd prefer making love with you a few dozen times first.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Born in Shame

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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.