“Her hand jerked, leaving an angry slash in the middle of the canvas. A headache drummed to life in the back of her skull. It’s not going to happen today. She ignored the shiver that skipped down her spine. This is a normal day. I’m painting a normal composition. But it was too late. It was happening already. She squeezed her eyes shut against the images flooding her brain, but no resistance would help now. She couldn’t escape.”
“She drew the main outline, keeping her fingers on the ferrule—the metal piece that clamped the bristles to the handle—and created a nose, mouth, and eyelids. For a moment, she wondered what color his eyes might be, then shoved aside the macabre thought. He had a strong, square jaw, his hair pushed back, looking sticky from the dirt that had been thrown directly onto his face.”
“She could drive down Hadley Road until she reached the right spot, then walk in. Would have to drive by the reservoir. She didn’t drive that road anymore. But even if she could, she wasn’t going to chase some imaginary dead man, or almost dead man, around the countryside.”
“Can I stay?” The question broke Ashley Price’s heart as she crouched in her messy foyer with her daughter in her arms. She clutched her five-year-old tighter as skinny little arms wrapped around her neck. “Very soon, okay?” Maddie—pink coat, pink boots, pink hat, pink gloves—pulled back and put on her poor-lost-puppy look. “Mo-om, you always say that. I’ll be good. I’ll be quiet when you paint. You won’t even know I’m here.”
“Her father didn’t know the half of her problems. Nobody did. Nobody ever would. She couldn’t let anyone find out just how crazy she was, the secret she kept. She would fight her way out of that dark hole somehow. She had to, or it would swallow her for good.”
“Of all the shades of red, she hated the wet, sticky brightness of crimson the most.”
“I get it. Artists are introverts. If you were out there socializing all the time, you wouldn’t have time to contemplate and create. I have artists who are social butterflies. I’m not making a lot of money off them.” She paused.”
“Tomorrow, said the voice of fear in her head. It always said, tomorrow, whether it talked about going to the grocery store or starting a new painting. Tomorrow you'll be brave, fear whispered. Tomorrow you'll be normal. Just give me today. That was how fear stole whole lives away.”
“This girl is getting a goddamn tracking device in her arm this time.”
“How adaptable human beings were without even realizing it, slipping blindly from state to state. One morning it was summer, the next you woke up and the whole year was over; one minute you were thirty, the next sixty, sixty next year quick as a wink, how fast it all was. How quickly and smoothly, yet how shockingly, when you thought about it, the seasons and the years gave way to each other”
“They were in charge of the privilege of staying and the joy of firing.”
“Living a life fully engaged and full of whimsy and the kind of things that love does is something most people plan to do, but along the way they just kind of forget. Their dreams become one of those "we'll go there next time" deferrals. The sad thing is, for many there is no "next time" because passing on the chance to cross over is an overall attitude toward life rather than a single decision.”
“The supreme adventure is being born. There we do walk suddenly into a splendid and startling trap... When we step into the family, by the act of being born, we do step into a world which is incalculable, into a world which has its own strange laws, into a world which could do without us, into a world we have not made. In other words, when we step into the family we step into a fairy-tale.”
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.