“If only these walls could talk…the world would know just how hard it is to tell the truth in a story in which everyone’s a liar.”
― Gregg Olsen, quote from Envy
“Some of this story is completely true. And some of it isn't. Like truth, evil comes in all sorts of flavors. Some bitter. Some deceptively sweet. Sometimes it comes with a heavy price. While most people don't invite evil into their lives, the dirty little secret is that an invitation isn't necessary. Locked doors don't matter. Neither do fancy security systems. Evil is kind of amazing when you think about it. She knows how to get inside.”
― Gregg Olsen, quote from Envy
“Why you need a reason for everything? Reason is something people say to make sense of things that don't make sense.”
― Gregg Olsen, quote from Envy
“You poke at evil with a stick," Valerie had said, offering chilling advice they'd never forget. "Never use your fingers.”
― Gregg Olsen, quote from Envy
“Maybe it was more than that. Maybe some things shouldn't be explained.”
― Gregg Olsen, quote from Envy
“He always told his girl, "If only these walls could talk... the world would know just how hard it is to tell the truth in a story in which everyone's a liar."
But the walls didn't talk.”
― Gregg Olsen, quote from Envy
“She was only fifteen! What is the matter with these kids today? Can't they wait to have sex until they get their driver's license and can go somewhere?”
― Gregg Olsen, quote from Envy
“She looked at ways to quantify life. Analytic in nature, her head almost always overruled her heart. Love it? Hate it? She wanted to KNOW it.”
― Gregg Olsen, quote from Envy
“No one, certainly no teenager, was normal or felt they were. Everyone wore a kind of mask that kept people from really seeing what - or who - was inside”
― Gregg Olsen, quote from Envy
“Living with myself wasn’t all that easy. I was not the young girl I once was. Once upon a time when I looked in the mirror, I saw this happy glow. Now nothing glowed except the leftover face cream from the night before.”
― Brenda Perlin, quote from Home Wrecker I
“Funny how new facts pop up and make you doubt that there’s any goodness in life. Everyone pretends to be normal and be your friend, but underneath, everyone is living some other life you don’t know about, and if only we had a camera on us at all times, we could go and watch each other’s tapes and find out what each of us was really like. But then you’d have to watch girls go poo and boys trying to go down on themselves.”
― James Franco, quote from Palo Alto: Stories
“Sin had so shut up mercy from us, that had not Christ made an atonement by his death, we should never have obtained it to all eternity.”
― John Flavel, quote from The Mystery of Providence
“I was free to appreciate the quiet and the way the yellowish-gray light of the rising sun entered the room, turning everything from black and white to color. The journey from Kansas to Oz right in my own kitchen.”
― Edward Kelsey Moore, quote from The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat
“I am fascinated by the evolution of language, and how local versions diverge to become dialects like Cornish English and Geordie and then imperceptibly diverge further to become mutually unintelligible but obviously related languages like German and Dutch. The analogy to genetic evolution is close enough to be illuminating and misleading at the same time. When populations diverge to become species, the time of separation is defined as the moment when they can no longer interbreed. I suggest that two dialects should be deemed to reach the status of separate languages when they have diverged to an analogously critical point: the point where, if a native speaker of one attempts to speak the other it is taken as a compliment rather than as an insult.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from An Appetite for Wonder: The Making of a Scientist
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.