“To stop. To cease, just for a moment. To turn your back on the world, to close your eyes - to see the nothing that is not rather than the nothing that is everywhere around you. To just be quiet in your mind for a little minute.
There are paradises even yet on the abandoned plains of the earth -- and they are not filled with fecund flowering Edens but rather just with sweet unerring silences.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from Exit Kingdom
“Your life ain't a target for the world to shoot at. The world is a target for your life to shoot at.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from Exit Kingdom
“Stories that pander to your every readerly desire and whim are like overly loyal dogs that live for the simple glow of your approval. I'm a cat person. I like a little aloofness in my pets and my writing.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from Exit Kingdom
“I think maybe I was just waitin on the apocalypse so I would have something to occupy me.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from Exit Kingdom
“It's one of the happy things about a world gone so wrong: your personal freakishness don't stand out so much.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from Exit Kingdom
“Everyone's always tryin to find an entrance to the kingdom of heaven, she says. Me, I ain't so interested in entrances. All I want's a kingdom of exits.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from Exit Kingdom
“Honey, she says, honest ain’t the half of what I’m not.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from Exit Kingdom
“It never meant anything, Moses says. Not to the god above it and not to the earth below it. It never did. Not even when they first did it. But it’s the doin it that counts. It’s something. You draw imaginary lines. That’s what you do.
The Vestal looks at him kindly, a smile on her lips that seems affectionate--even maybe admiring.
Then what do you do with the lines? she asks.
And Moses looks at her straight and true. He says:
Then you pick one side or the other and you stand there.”
― Joshua Gaylord, quote from Exit Kingdom
Joshua Gaylord
Born place: Anaheim, California, The United States
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“What use were his talons and fangs to the dying tiger? In the clutches, say, to make matters worse, of a boa-constrictor? But apparently this improbable tiger had no intention of dying just yet. On the contrary, he intended taking a little walk, taking the boa-constrictor with him, even to pretend, for a while, it wasn't there.”
― Malcolm Lowry, quote from Under the Volcano
“True love, it's like an illness. I never understood it before. In books and plays. Poems. I never understood what drove otherwise intelligent, right-thinking people to do such extravagant, irrational things. Now I do. It's an illness. You can catch it when you least expect. There's no known cure. And sometimes, in its most extreme, it's fatal.”
― Kate Morton, quote from The House at Riverton
“Drinking wine and wearing trousers were nothing compared to reading the history of ideas.”
― Ayaan Hirsi Ali, quote from Infidel
“Just aiming a speely input device, or a Farspark chambre, or whatever you call it... a speelycaptor... at something doesn't collect what is meaningful to me. I need someone to gather it in with all their senses, mix it round in their head, and make it over into words.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Anathem
“The clear lesson of New England’s history is that when there are not enough suitable men around to run the world, women are perfectly capable of doing so.”
― Wallace Stegner, quote from Crossing to Safety
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If Beale Street Coul...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.
