“The better you look, the more you see.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, quote from Glamorama
“Baby, when you were young and your heart was an open book, you used to say live and let live. You know you did, you know you did, you know you did.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, quote from Glamorama
“What? Did we end up hating each other? Did we end up the way we thought we always knew would? Did I end up wearing khakis because of that fucking ad?”
― Bret Easton Ellis, quote from Glamorama
“At first she was so inexpressive and indifferent that I wanted to know more about her. I envied that blankness - it was the opposite of helplessness or damage or craving or suffering or shame. But she was never really happy and already, in a matter of days, she had reached a stage in our relationship where she no longer really cared about me or any thoughts or ideas I might have had.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, quote from Glamorama
“How is your father?” she asks disinterestedly.
“A contrivance,” I mutter. “A plot device.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, quote from Glamorama
“Baby, Andy once said that beauty is a sign of intelligence.'
She turns slowly to look at me. 'Who, Victor? Who? Andy who?' She coughs, blowing her nose. 'Andy Kaufman? Andy Griffith? Who in the hell told you this? Andy Rooney?'
'Warhol,' I say softly, hurt. 'Baby...”
― Bret Easton Ellis, quote from Glamorama
“The Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash into Me” played over the montage, not that the lyrics had anything to do with the images the song was played over but it was “haunting”, it was “moody”, it was “summing things up”, it gave the footage an “emotional resonance” that I guess we were incapable of capturing ourselves. At first my feelings were basically so what? But then I suggested other music: “Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails, but I was told that the rights were sky-high and that the song was “too ominous” for this sequence; Nada Surf’s “Popular” had “too many minor chords”, it didn’t fit the “mood of the piece,” it was – again – “too ominous.” When I told them I seriously did not think things could get any more fucking ominous than they already were, I was told, “Things get very much more ominous, Victor,” and then I was left alone.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, quote from Glamorama
“Everything suddenly seems displaced, subtle gradations erase borders, but it’s more forceful than that.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, quote from Glamorama
“Confusion and hopelessness don't necessarily cause a person to act.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, quote from Glamorama
“Café Flore is packed, shimmering, every table filled. Bentley notices this with a grim satisfaction but Bentley feels lost. He’s still haunted by the movie Grease and obsessed with legs that he always felt were too skinny though no one else did and it never hampered his modeling career and he’s still not over a boy he met at a Styx concert in 1979 in a stadium somewhere in the Midwest, outside a town he has not been back to since he left it at eighteen, and that boy’s name was Cal, who pretended to be straight even though he initially fell for Bentley’s looks but Cal knew Bentley was emotionally crippled and the fact that Bentley didn’t believe in heaven didn’t make him more endearing so Cal drifted off and inevitably became head of programming at HBO for a year or two. Bentley sits down, already miked, and lights a cigarette. Next to them Japanese tourists study maps, occasionally snap photos. This is the establishing shot.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, quote from Glamorama
“Around here, ‘tomorrow night’ means anywhere from five days to a month. Jesus,”
― Bret Easton Ellis, quote from Glamorama
“when you were young and your heart was an open book you used to say live and let live.”
― Bret Easton Ellis, quote from Glamorama
“Even if we don’t go as far as Descartes’s belief in an immaterial soul that somehow interacts with our body, it’s tempting to visualize a dictatorial “self” inside our brain that is the locus of our self-awareness. Philosopher Daniel Dennett coined the term “Cartesian theater” to describe the supposed mental control room containing a tiny homunculus who gathers all of the input from our sensory organs, accesses our memories, and sends out instructions to the various parts of our bodies. Consciousness”
― Sean Carroll, quote from The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself
“A good social system is not to be secured by making people unselfish, but, by making their own vital impulses fit in with other peoples. This is feasible. Those who have produced stoic philosophies have all had enough to eat and drink.
I feel I shall find the truth on my deathbed and be surrounded by people too stupid to understand—fussing about medicines instead of searching for wisdom.
I hate being all tidy like a book in a library where nobody reads – prison is horribly like that.”
― Bertrand Russell, quote from The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell
“How weary, stale, flat and unprofitable, Seem to me all the uses of this world!”
― William Shakespeare, quote from The Annotated Shakespeare: The Comedies, Histories, Sonnets and Other Poems, Tragedies and Romances Complete (Three Volume Set in Slipcase)
“So, how do you kill a dragon? (Channon)
With a very sharp sword. (Sebastian)”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from Dragonswan
“I know what I want.”
“Graham…things can change.”
“I need you, Soraya. I’ve never said that to another woman in my life.” I leaned my forehead against her and whispered, “I need you.”
― Vi Keeland, quote from Stuck-Up Suit
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.