“A police state is a country run by criminals”
― Robert Harris, quote from Fatherland
“Down in the cellar the Gestapo were licensed to practice was the Ministry of Justice called ‘heightened interrogation’. The rules had been drawn up by civilised men in warm offices and they stipulated the presence of a doctor.”
― Robert Harris, quote from Fatherland
“What do you do,’ he said, ‘if you devote your life to discovering criminals, and it gradually occurs to you that the real criminals are the people you work for? What do you do when everyone tells you not to worry, you can’t do anything about it, it was a long time ago?’ She was looking at him in a different way. ‘I suppose you go crazy.’ ‘Or worse. Sane.”
― Robert Harris, quote from Fatherland
“Against the alchemy of two naked bodies in a bed in the darkness, and against all the complex longings and attachments and commitments such intimacy might arouse, he had nothing with which to fight.”
― Robert Harris, quote from Fatherland
“A permanent state of war on the Eastern front will help to form a sound race of men,’ the Führer had once said, ‘and will prevent us relapsing into the softness of a Europe thrown back upon itself.’ But”
― Robert Harris, quote from Fatherland
“How odd it is, thought March afterwards, to live your life in ignorance of the past, of your world, yourself. Yet how easy to do it! You went along from day to day, down paths other people had prepared for you, never raising your head - enfolded in their logic, from swaddling clothes to shroud. It was a kind of fear. Well, goodbye to that. And good to leave it behind - whatever happened now. - 214”
― Robert Harris, quote from Fatherland
“The avenue was designed by Reichsminister Albert Speer and completed in 1957. It is one hundred and twenty-three meters wide and five-point-six kilometers in length. It is both wider, and two and a half times longer, than the Chaps Elysees in Paris.
Higher, longer, bigger, wider, more expensive...even in victory, thought March, Germany has a parvenu's inferiority complex. Nothing stands on its own. Everything has to be compared with what the foreigners have....”
― Robert Harris, quote from Fatherland
“You cant build on a mass grave. Human beings are better than that - we have to be better than that - I do believe, don't you?" Charlie McGuire, Fatherland”
― Robert Harris, quote from Fatherland
“Childhood is the one story that stands by itself in every soul.”
― Ivan Doig, quote from The Whistling Season
“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom in learning from books as well as from nature.”
― Mortimer J. Adler, quote from How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading
“Sixty three sunsets I saw revolve on that perpendicular hill – mad raging sunsets pouring in sea foams of cloud through unimaginable crags like the crags you grayly drew in pencil as a child, with every rose-tint of hope beyond, making you feel just like them, brilliant and bleak beyond words. –”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from Lonesome Traveler
“His eyes beheld beauty not in reality but in the printed word. Standing in the waiting-room, he realized that in his life he had accepted secondary experience -- the experience of reading someone else's thoughts -- over real life. ”
― Ian Rankin, quote from Knots and Crosses
“In my life long study of human beings, I have found that no matter how hard they try, they have found no way yet to prevent the arrival of Monday morning. And they do try, of course, but Monday always comes, and all the drones have to scuttle back to their dreary workday lives of meaningless toin and suffering.”
― Jeff Lindsay, quote from Dexter in the Dark
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.