“It was like discovering that your innermost fires and terrors, the things you believed no one else could fathom, were in fact the basis of a recognized philosophy. Some part of you felt intimately invaded, threatened; some other part fell to its knees and sobbed in gratitude that it was no longer alone.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, quote from Exquisite Corpse
“I'm your nightmare. Did you think you were done with nightmares, now you've become one?”
― Poppy Z. Brite, quote from Exquisite Corpse
“Never relinquish your terrors. That's when they catch you.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, quote from Exquisite Corpse
“I press my hands against my chest, wishing I could somehow be even closer to him. I hate skin; I hate bones and bodies. I want to curl up inside of him and be carried there forever.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, quote from Exquisite Corpse
“Horror is the badge of humanity, worn proudly, self-righteously, and often falsely.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, quote from Exquisite Corpse
“And what was I if not death's ghostwriter?”
― Poppy Z. Brite, quote from Exquisite Corpse
“Ah, relationships. If he was lucky, Luke thought, he would never have another one.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, quote from Exquisite Corpse
“But if I die without trying again, I'm a coward. I don't mind having regrets about stuff I've done. It's the regrets about stuff I haven't done that bother me.”
― Poppy Z. Brite, quote from Exquisite Corpse
“How can I explain to anyone that stories are like air to me, I breathe them in and let them out over and over again.”
― Jacqueline Woodson, quote from Brown Girl Dreaming
“They leave Omelas, they walk ahead into the
darkness, and they do not come back. The place they go towards is a place even less imaginable to most of us than the city of happiness. I cannot describe it at all. It is possible that it does not exist. But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas
“I understood that people are trying to transform themselves all the time: the universal urge to be otherwise. So as not to look as they look, sound as they sound, be treated as they are treated, suffer in the ways they suffer, etc., etc., they change hairdos, tailors, spouses, accents, friends, they change their addresses, their noses, their wallpaper, even their forms of government, all to be more like themselves or less like themselves, or more like or less like that exemplary prototype whose image is theirs to emulate or to repudiate obsessively for life.”
― Philip Roth, quote from Operation Shylock: A Confession
“about an hour and a half I’m going to have the president call him. The president is going to tell Jack that he wants you to look through all of the logs the Secret Service has on Ross and Alexander going back to this past September. I especially want you to look at the two weeks prior to the attack. I want to know if they had any foreign visitors, and I want you to keep an eye out for any mention of Stu Garret.”
― Vince Flynn, quote from Act of Treason
“Four A.M. and the darkness had a quality of inexorability and menace as though it would never lift, as though, without anyone noticing it, the dawn of the day before had been the beginning of the last light ever in the history of the world.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Blessings
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.