“Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Dream Country
“But he did not understand the price. Mortals never do. They only see the prize, their heart's desire, their dream... But the price of getting what you want, is getting what you once wanted.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Dream Country
“Writers are liars my dear, surely you know that by now?”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Dream Country
“Writers are liars, my dear, surely you know that by now? And yet, things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Dream Country
“You people always hold onto old identities, old faces and masks, long after they've served their purpose. But you've got to learn to throw things away eventually.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Dream Country
“I smoke a cigarette, and pretend I'm normal. And I wish I was dead.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Dream Country
“Still, every little bit helps, as the old woman said when she pissed in the sea.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Dream Country
“I only have two kinds of dreams: the bad and the terrible. Bad dreams I can cope with. They're just nightmares, and they end eventually. The terrible dreams are the good dreams.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Dream Country
“Rainie, mythologies take longer to die than people believe. They linger on in a kind of dream country that affects all of you.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Dream Country
“They say that cigarettes will kill you, eventually. Fine. That's just fine. I only wish they'd do it faster.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from Dream Country
“Feely had the knack of being able to screw one side of her face into a witchlike horror while keeping the other as sweet and demure as any maiden from Tennyson. It was perhaps, the one thing I envied her.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from The Dead in Their Vaulted Arches
“And in Kandahar he was taught about survival, about fighting and killing and hunting, and he learned much else without being taught, such as looking out for himself and watching his tongue and not saying the wrong thing, the thing that might get him killed. About the dignity of the lost, about losing, and how it cleansed the soul to accept defeat, and about letting go, avoiding the trap of holding on too tightly to what you wanted, and about abandonment in general, and in particular fatherlesness, the lessness of fathers, the lessness of the fatherless, and the best defenses of those who are less against those who are more: inwardness, forethought, cunning, humility and good peripheral vision. The many lessons of lessness. The lessening from which growing could begin.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from The Enchantress of Florence
“To be oneself, simply oneself, is so amazing and utterly unique an experience that it's hard to convince oneself so singular a thing happens to everybody.”
― Simone de Beauvoir, quote from Prime of Life (1929-1944)
“William's mother, dead these six years. He spoke of her with love, but without grief. Six years, and whatever the loss, happiness steals back.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Thornyhold
“I wish the rent Was heaven sent.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from The Collected Poems
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.