“I'm not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I've gotten from books.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“It's a good thing most people bleed on the inside or this would be a gory, blood-smeared earth.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“I'm partly somebody else trying to fit in and say the right things and do the right thing and be in the right place and wear what everybody else is wearing. Sometimes I think we're all trying to be shadows of each other, trying to buy the same records and everything even if we don't like them. Kids are like robots, off an assembly line, and I don't want to be a robot!”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“I really am only one infinitely small part of an aching humanity.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“I wouldn't intentionally hurt anyone in this whole world. I wouldn't hurt them physically or emotionally, how then can people so consistently do it to me? Even my parents treat me like I'm stupid and inferior and ever short. I guess I'll never measure up to anyone's expectations. I surely don't measure up to what I'd like to be.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“I guess I'll never measure up to anyone's expectations. I surely don't measure up to what I'd like to be.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“Maybe the new me will be different.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“I'm afraid to live and afraid to die.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“How is it possible for me to be so miserable and embarrassed and humiliated and beaten an function still talk and smile and concentrate?”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“The same old dumb teachers teaching the same old dumb subjects in the same old dumb school. I seem to be kind of losing interest in everything. At first I thought high school would be fun but it's just dull. Everything's dull. Maybe it's because I'm growing up and life is becoming more blase.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“Why is life so difficult? Why can't we be just ourselves and have everyone accept us the way we are?”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“She didn't know whether she was running away from something or running to something, but she admitted that deep in her heart she wanted to go home.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“Nobody's talking to me, but nobody's hassling me either. I guess you can't have everything.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“They have accepted me as an individual, as a personality, as an entity. I belong! I am important! I am somebody!”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“…I’d have died without them [books]. Even now I’m not really sure which parts of myself are real and which parts are things I’ve gotten from books.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“I can't believe that I changed so little. I expected to look old and hollow and gray, but I guess it's only me on the inside that has shriveled and deteriorated.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“I've been asleep and I don't know if it's the same day or week or year, but who the hell cares anyway?”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“I'm partly somebody else trying to fit in and say the right things and do the right thing and be in the right place and wear what everybody else is wearing. Sometimes I think we're all trying to be shadows of each other, trying to buy the same records and everything even if we don't like them.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“I'm afraid to hope but I can't help it, and the idea of hoping in this most hopeless of all places makes me want to cry.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“We get pissed off when someone tells us what to do, but we don't know what to do unless some fat bastard tell us.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“It's a good thing most people bleed on the inside or this would really be a gory, blood-smeared earth.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“I bet the pill is harder to get than drugs--which shows how screwed up this world really is!”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“I looked at sky this morning and realized summer is almost gone which really made me sad because it doesn't seem as though its been here at all.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“I don’t want to get old. I have this very silly fear, dear friend, that one day I’ll be old, without ever having really been young.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“This morning when I left Mom's parting words were, "Come straight home after school." Wow! Like I'm going to get stoned at 3:30—it doesn't sound so bad at that.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“I feel like Alice in Wonderland. Maybe Lewis G Carroll was on drugs too.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“If only parents would listen! If only they would let us talk instead of forever and eternally and continuously harping and preaching and nagging and correcting and yacking, yacking, yacking! But they won’t listen! They simply won’t or can’t or don’t want to listen, and we kids keep winding up back in the same old frustrating, lost, lonely corner with no one to relate to either verbally or physically.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“I'm partly somebody else trying to fit in and say the right things and do the right thing and be in the right place and wear what everybody else is wearing. Sometimes I think we're all trying to be shadows of each other...”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“Antes pensaba que la única que sentía las cosas era yo, pero realmente no soy sino una parte infinitamente pequeña de la humanidad que sufre.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“Tengo este necio temor: el temor de ser vieja sin haber sido nunca joven de
verdad.”
― Beatrice Sparks, quote from Go Ask Alice
“He can run faster than Severus Snape confronted with shampoo.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
“He remembered the time he had hooked one of a pair of marlin. The male fish always let the female fish feed first and the hooked fish, the female, made a wild, panic-stricken, despairing fight that soon exhausted her, and all the time the male had stayed with her, crossing the line and circling with her on the surface. He had stayed so close that the old man was afraid he would cut the line with his tail which was sharp as a scythe and almost of that size and shape. When the old man had gaffed her and clubbed her, holding the rapier bill with its sandpaper edge and clubbing her across the top of her head until her colour turned to a colour almost like the backing of mirrors, and then, with the boy’s aid, hoisted her aboard, the male fish had stayed by the side of the boat. Then, while the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon, the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep, his lavender wings, that were his pectoral fins, spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing. He was beautiful, the old man remembered, and he had stayed.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Old Man and the Sea
“So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.”
― Charles Dickens, quote from Great Expectations
“I am doomed to remember a boy with a wrecked voice. Not because of his voice, or because he was the smallest person I ever knew, or even because he was the instrument of my mother's death, but because he is the reason I believe in God. I am a Christian because of Owen Meany.”
― John Irving, quote from A Prayer for Owen Meany
“We have a task before us which must be speedily performed. We know that it will be ruinous to make delay. The most important crisis of our life calls, trumpet-tongued, for immediate energy and action. We glow, we are consumed with eagerness to commence the work, with the anticipation of whose glorious result our whole souls are on fire. It must, it shall be undertaken to-day, and yet we put it off until to-morrow; and why? There is no answer, except that we feel perverse, using the word with no comprehension of the principle. To-morrow arrives, and with it a more impatient anxiety to do our duty, but with this very increase of anxiety arrives, also, a nameless, a positively fearful, because unfathomable, craving for delay. This craving gathers strength as the moments fly. The last hour for action is at hand. We tremble with the violence of the conflict within us, — of the definite with the indefinite — of the substance with the shadow. But, if the contest have proceeded thus far, it is the shadow which prevails, — we struggle in vain. The clock strikes, and is the knell of our welfare. At the same time, it is the chanticleer-note to the ghost that has so long overawed us. It flies — it disappears — we are free. The old energy returns. We will labor now. Alas, it is too late!”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Complete Stories and Poems
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.