Quotes from Early Autumn

“Too much positive is either scared or stupid or both. Reality is uncertain.”
― Robert B. Parker, quote from Early Autumn

“The urban renewers had struck again. They'd evicted me, a fortune-teller, and a bookie from the corner of Mass. Ave. and Boylston, moved in with sandblasters and bleached oak and plant hangers, and last I looked appeared to be turning the place into a Marin County whorehouse.”
― Robert B. Parker, quote from Early Autumn

“In the bank they did the same kind of stuff the fortune-teller and the bookie had done. But they dressed better.”
― Robert B. Parker, quote from Early Autumn

“Businessmen learn the way businessmen are supposed to be. Professors learn the way professors are supposed to be. Construction workers learn how construction workers are supposed to be. They spend their lives trying to be what they’re supposed to be and being scared they aren’t. Quiet desperation.”
― Robert B. Parker, quote from Early Autumn

“The Mass. Ave. Bridge is open... Some MIT students once measured it by repeatedly placing an undergraduate named Smoot on the ground and marking off his length. Every six feet or so there is still the indication of one smoot, two smoots, painted on the pavement. I could never remember how many smoots long the bridge was.”
― Robert B. Parker, quote from Early Autumn

“Her toenails were painted. It didn’t help much. Never saw a toenail I liked.”
― Robert B. Parker, quote from Early Autumn

“if you lay back and let oblivion roll over you, it will be your fault.”
― Robert B. Parker, quote from Early Autumn

“We’re not ordinary. No one else is like us.”
― Robert B. Parker, quote from Early Autumn

“A way of living better is to make the decisions you need to make based on what you can control. When you can.”
― Robert B. Parker, quote from Early Autumn

“I could not love thee, dear, so much,’ ” I said, “ ‘loved I not honor more.’ ”
― Robert B. Parker, quote from Early Autumn

“tape on and the car trembled with percussion all the way to Saugus, where Hawk pulled into a Martignetti’s off Route 1 and bought three”
― Robert B. Parker, quote from Early Autumn

“The point is not to get hung up on being what you’re supposed to be. If you can, it’s good to do what pleases you.”
― Robert B. Parker, quote from Early Autumn

“Then why don’t you get married?” “I’m not sure. Mostly it’s a question of how we’d affect each other, I suppose. Would”
― Robert B. Parker, quote from Early Autumn

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Popular quotes

“When you are young you believe the world is all yours, glorious and exhilarating and fascinating and full of promise and trumpets and drums and marches and new worlds,” said Charles. “We don’t ask ourselves what we are living for then. We know. But we forget, later, or it all seems a foolish dream.”
― Taylor Caldwell, quote from Captains and the Kings

“I had a lovely childhood in Ireland, riding, hunting, and a great big, bare, draughty house with lots and lots of sun in it. If you’ve had a happy childhood, nobody can take that away from you, can they? It was afterwards—when I grew up—that things seemed always to go wrong.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from A Pocket Full of Rye

“We do not have to spend money and go hungry and struggle and study to become sensual; we always were. We need not believe we must somehow earn good erotic care; we always deserved it.

Femaleness and its sexuality are beautiful. Women have long secretly suspected as much. In that sexuality, women are physically beautiful already; superb; breathtaking.

Many, many men see this way too. A man who wants to define himself as a real lover of women admires what shows of her past on a woman's face, before she ever saw him, and the adventures and stresses that her body has undergone, the scars of trauma, the changes of childbirth, her distinguishing characteristics, the light is her expression. The number of men who already see in this way is far greater than the arbiters of mass culture would lead us to believe, since the story they need to tell ends with the opposite moral.”
― Naomi Wolf, quote from The Beauty Myth

“Spring, spring! Bytuene Mershe ant Averil, when spray biginneth to spring! When shaws be sheene and swards full fayre, and leaves both large and longe! When the hounds of spring are on winter’s traces, in the spring time, the only pretty ring time, when the birds do sing, hey-ding-a-ding ding, cuckoo, jug-jug, pu-wee, ta-witta-woo! And so on and so on and so on. See almost any poet between the Bronze Age and 1805.”
― George Orwell, quote from Keep the Aspidistra Flying

“Love doesn't make you blind. It paralyzes until you can't breathe or run away from it.”
― Courtney Allison Moulton, quote from Wings of the Wicked

Interesting books

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.