“Low branches, dead and snapping against us. On the lookout for rattlesnakes. But the path was short enough, and soon we were on a kind of terrace. Old lawn overgrown by grass and weed, old concrete cracked in discrete chunks, vast areas overrun. An enchanted place for me, and only for me, because I was too young to remember, and so in my mind this place could become more.”
― David Vann, quote from Goat Mountain
“That night longer than all my life before it. No scale or measure in this world can ever be held constant. We are always slipping.”
― David Vann, quote from Goat Mountain
“We're not supposed to touch the dead. This is why we make a comfortable afterlife for them, so they will not reach out. We hope to distract them, keep them busy. Burial is a hope.”
― David Vann, quote from Goat Mountain
“WE THINK OF CAIN AS THE ONE WHO KILLED HIS BROTHER, but who else was around to kill? They were the first two born. Cain killed what was available. The story has nothing to do with brothers.”
― David Vann, quote from Goat Mountain
“Yalnızca biz değil, bizden önceki herkes için de olduğu gibi, ıstırap çekmenin ve insan ömrünün bir simgesi olarak kendi haçını taşıyan İsa için de olduğu gibi, hayat tekrardan ibarettir. Tüm hikâyelerimizde bizler şu yeryüzünde bir ağırlığı sürükleyip taşırız. Buna Çile denir. İsa, kendimize acımamızın hikâyesidir.”
― David Vann, quote from Goat Mountain
“Mr. Feld was right; life was like baseball, filled with loss and error, with bad hops and wild pitches, a game in which even champions lost almost as often as they won, and even the best hitters were put out seventy percent of the time.”
― Michael Chabon, quote from Summerland
“I don’t remember now who took the photo of us, but I’ve had it in my room for years. We’re leaning out of our windows and we’re laughing at each other with joyfulness purer than anything to do with the polite smiling you get used to doing when you get older. The photo has the kind of proper smiles that happen when you’re looking straight into the face of someone who’s been your best friend for a long time.”
― Sarah Moore Fitzgerald, quote from The Apple Tart of Hope
“A woman with legs up to my chest emerged from one of the illustrious establishments. She was shaped like an hourglass, but had the shrunken face of a mummy.”
― Julian North, quote from Age of Order
“Sometimes it gets old, living in the shadows. Somehow they’re not quite so dark when you’re around.”
― A.L. Jackson, quote from Stand
“But to tear down a factory or to revolt against a government or to avoid repair of a motorcycle because it is a system is to attack effects rather than causes; and as long as the attack is upon effects only, no change is possible. The true system, the real system, is our present construction of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding government. There’s so much talk about the system. And so little understanding.”
― Robert M. Pirsig, quote from Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
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.