“Because if you don't have at least one person believing in you, then there's not much reason to give a shit about anything.”
― Lisa McMann, quote from Dead to You
“Maybe you don't have to remember something for it to be true. For it to exist.”
― Lisa McMann, quote from Dead to You
“Feels like I'm in a play and I don't know all my lines.”
― Lisa McMann, quote from Dead to You
“I just hope God doesn't get all the credit for bringing me home, because I sure hitchhiked a hell of a long ways and walked my frozen feet off to get here.”
― Lisa McMann, quote from Dead to You
“It's hard to watch. Can't stand the pressure of that much hope.”
― Lisa McMann, quote from Dead to You
“It's like a cat bell, so pretty yet alarming, because i know I'm letting myself fall when maybe I should fly away. But the loneliness inside, it's so fucking painful. It's that longing feeling that scratches to escape and makes you want to blurt out all kinds of gushy crap just to get the girl to look at you...I hate it. Love its melty-ness and hate its leash around my neck.”
― Lisa McMann, quote from Dead to You
“we don’t just eat with our mouths; we eat with our eyes and ears too. So if we watch or listen to poisonous negativity, violence, gossip, and pretty much anything that is not conducive to our growth or maturity as adults, then it’s no different than eating only refined sugars, fried foods and saturated fats; we’re bound to get sick. That sickness, however, takes the form of fear, paranoia, anxiety, greed, insecurity, a lack of trust in our fellow brothers and sisters, and discontentment with life altogether.”
― Timber Hawkeye, quote from Buddhist Boot Camp Manuscript
“Vaclav has said goodnight to Lena every night since the night she went away. Out loud. In a whisper. [...] He filled the words with all his love and care and worry for Lena and launched them out to her, and like homing pigeons, he trusted them to find her.”
― Haley Tanner, quote from Vaclav and Lena
“Your father threw away the greatest gift your mother could bestow- the gift of what their love created.”
― Cameron Dokey, quote from Before Midnight: A Retelling of "Cinderella"
“All great, simple images reveal a psychic state. The house, even more than the landscape, is a "psychic state," and even when reproduced as it appears from the outside, it bespeaks intimacy. Psychologists generally, and Francoise Minkowska in particular, together with those whom she has succeeded interesting in the subject, have studied the drawing of houses made by children, and even used them for testing. Indeed, the house-test has the advantage of welcoming spontaneity, for many children draw a house spontaneously while dreaming over their paper and pencil. To quote Anne Balif: "Asking a child to draw his house is asking him to reveal the deepest dream shelter he has found for his happiness. If he is happy, he will succeed in drawing a snug, protected house which is well built on deeply-rooted foundations." It will have the right shape, and nearly always there will be some indication of its inner strength. In certain drawings, quite obviously, to quote Mme. Balif, "it is warm indoors, and there is a fire burning, such a big fire, in fact, that it can be seen coming out of the chimney." When the house is happy, soft smoke rises in gay rings above the roof.
If the child is unhappy, however, the house bears traces of his distress. In this connection, I recall that Francoise Minkowska organized an unusually moving exhibition of drawings by Polish and Jewish children who had suffered the cruelties of the German occupation during the last war. One child, who had been hidden in a closet every time there was an alert, continued to draw narrow, cold, closed houses long after those evil times were over. These are what Mme. Minkowska calls "motionless" houses, houses that have become motionless in their rigidity. "This rigidity and motionlessness are present in the smoke as well as in the window curtains. The surrounding trees are quite straight and give the impression of standing guard over the house". Mme. Minkowska knows that a live house is not really "motionless," that, particularly, it integrates the movements by means of which one accedes to the door. Thus the path that leads to the house is often a climbing one. At times, even, it is inviting. In any case, it always possesses certain kinesthetic features. If we were making a Rorschach test, we should say that the house has "K."
Often a simple detail suffices for Mme. Minkowska, a distinguished psychologist, to recognize the way the house functions. In one house, drawn by an eight-year-old child, she notes that there is " a knob on the door; people go in the house, they live there." It is not merely a constructed house, it is also a house that is "lived-in." Quite obviously the door-knob has a functional significance. This is the kinesthetic sign, so frequently forgotten in the drawings of "tense" children.
Naturally, too, the door-knob could hardly be drawn in scale with the house, its function taking precedence over any question of size. For it expresses the function of opening, and only a logical mind could object that it is used to close as well as to open the door. In the domain of values, on the other hand, a key closes more often than it opens, whereas the door-knob opens more often than it closes. And the gesture of closing is always sharper, firmer, and briefer than that of opening. It is by weighing such fine points as these that, like Francoise Minkowska, one becomes a psychologist of houses.”
― Gaston Bachelard, quote from The Poetics of Space
“While the nature of this radiation will give no information whatsoever on what fell into the black hole,”
― Lawrence M. Krauss, quote from The Physics of Star Trek
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.