“The trouble with being inspired to perform the impossible was that the inspiration gave you no clues to the practical means.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Eye of the Needle
“Blenkinsop sighed. "As usual, those of you who can think of better ways to win the war are invited to write directly to Mr. Winston Churchill, number 10 Downing Street, London South-West-One. Now, are there any questions, as opposed to stupid criticisms?”
― Ken Follett, quote from Eye of the Needle
“Our whole strategy must be to prevent the Allies from securing a beachhead, because once they achieve that, the battle is lost…perhaps even the war.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Eye of the Needle
“War was grueling and oppressive and frustrating and uncomfortable, but one had friends. If peace brought back loneliness, Godliman thought he would not be able to live with it.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Eye of the Needle
“Villages in the English countryside were cut off by the snow,”
― Ken Follett, quote from Eye of the Needle
“Around most of its coast the cliffs rise out of the cold sea without the courtesy of a beach. Angered by this rudeness the waves pound on the rock in impotent rage: a ten-thousand-year fit of bad temper that the island ignores with impunity.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Eye of the Needle
“I haven’t had the opportunity to discover the merits of monogamy.”
― Ken Follett, quote from Eye of the Needle
“It was strange to stand there in front of the mirror and see myself like I was my own best friend, a kid wanted to hang with forever. This was a boy I could travel to the seacoasts with, a boy I'd like to meet up with in foreign cities like Calcutta and London and Brazil, a boy I could trust who also had a good sense of humor and liked smoked oysters from a can and good weed and the occasional 40 ounces of malt. If I was going to be alone for the rest of my life this was the person I wanted to be alone with.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Rule of the Bone
“Still, national politics meant little to him: about as much as paper airplanes would mean to the survivor of a plane crash.”
― Harry Mulisch, quote from The Assault
“What I did not know was that I loved him, too. That was what I had found, what had been there all the time; how stupid, how selfish I had been, not to see it.”
― Melanie Benjamin, quote from Alice I Have Been
“Life is so full of unpredictable beauty and strange surprises. Sometimes that beauty is too much for me to handle. Do you know that feeling? When something is just too beautiful? When someone says something or writes something or plays something that moves you to the point of tears, maybe even changes you.”
― Mark Oliver Everett, quote from Things The Grandchildren Should Know
“those who condemn what they do not understand are, surely, little men.”
― Sheldon Vanauken, quote from A Severe Mercy: A Story of Faith, Tragedy and Triumph
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.