“How do you wake up? It was one thing to know that you had been asleep all your life, but something else to wake up from it, to find out you were really alive and it wasn't anybody's fault but your own. Of course that was the problem.
All right. Everything is a dream. Nothing hangs together. You move from one dream to another and there is no reason for the change. Your eyes see things and your ears hear, but nothing has any reason behind it. It would be easier to believe in God. Then you could wake up and yawn and stretch and grin at a world that was put together on a plan of mercy and death, punishment for evil, joy for good, and if the game was crazy at least it had rules. But that didn't make sense. It had never made any sense. The trouble was, now that he was not asleep and not awake, what he saw and heard didn't make sense either.
Mishmash, he thought. You know enough to know how you feel is senseless, but you don't know enough to know why.”
― Don Carpenter, quote from Hard Rain Falling
“All night long, in his cell, he burned with hatred. It did not matter what he thought, it was how he felt; and alone in the darkness of his cell, with the muttering noises of the tank around him, he felt like murdering the universe.”
― Don Carpenter, quote from Hard Rain Falling
“He did not want to see the war movie. It would be full of shit.”
― Don Carpenter, quote from Hard Rain Falling
“Didn't they understand that for some people the opera, the drama, the ballet, were only boring, and yet a peepshow on Market Street was art? They want to make everything gray and tasteful. Don't they understand how awful good taste seems to people who don't have it? Ha, what do they care about people with bad taste! Nothing. But I do. I love them. They wear cheap perfume and carry transistor radios. They buy plastic dog turds and painted turtles and pennants and signs that say, "I don't swim in your toilet, so please don't pee in my pool!" and they buy smelly popcorn and eat it on the street and go to bad movies and stand here in doorways sneaking nips of whiskey just like I'm doing, and they're all so nice.”
― Don Carpenter, quote from Hard Rain Falling
“Remove,’ I said to myself, `the impetus to private ownership, and you have made the first giant step toward removing the causes of injustice in the world. There would be no greed if there were no possessions, no jealousy, no envy, perhaps even no hatred.”
― Don Carpenter, quote from Hard Rain Falling
“How do you wake up? It was one thing to know that you had been asleep all your life, but something else to wake up from it, to find out you were really alive and it wasn't anybody's fault but your own. Of course that was the problem.”
― Don Carpenter, quote from Hard Rain Falling
“He promptly forgot all about being the hero of a coward’s nightmare,”
― Don Carpenter, quote from Hard Rain Falling
“It was an awful word. Nothing. It made him sick at heart. He refused to believe it. Hebdemanded that there be something he could do. He demanded that his love be worth something to his child. If it wasn't, life was garbage. He hd to rulenout the idea that life was just a matter of accident, of percentages, because it was just too goddamn much to stand for. There had to be some way you could make yourself be felt.”
― Don Carpenter, quote from Hard Rain Falling
Don Carpenter
Born place: in Berkeley, California, The United States
Born date March 16, 1931
See more on GoodReads
“Papa-bobo précipité avec inquiétude sur mon genou saignant, qui va chercher les médicaments et s'installera des heures au chevet de mes varicelle, rougeole et coqueluche pour me lire Les Quatre Filles du docteur March ou jouer au pendu. Papa-enfant, "tu es plus bête qu'elle", dit-elle. Toujours prêt à m'emmener à la foire, aux films de Fernandel, à me fabriquer une paire d'échasses et à m'initier à l'argot d'avant la guerre, pépédéristal et autres cezigue pâteux qui me ravissent. Papa indispensable pour me conduire à l'école et m'attendre midi et soir, le vélo à la main, un peu à l'écart de la cohue des mères, les jambes de son pantalon resserrées en bas par des pinces en fer. Affolé par le moindre retard. Après, quand je serai assez grande pour aller seule dans les rues, il guettera mon retour. Un père déjà vieux émerveillé d'avoir une fille. Lumière jaune fixe des souvenirs, il traverse la cour, tête baissée à cause du soleil, une corbeille sous le bras. J'ai quatre ans, il m'apprend à enfiler mon manteau en retenant les manches de mon pull-over entre mes poings pour qu'elles ne boulichonnent pas en haut des bras. Rien que des images de douceur et de sollicitude. Chefs de famille sans réplique, grandes gueules domestiques, héros de la guerre ou du travail, je vous ignore, j'ai été la fille de cet homme-là.”
― Annie Ernaux, quote from A Frozen Woman
“I saw the empty, sad girl
smile for the sad boy who loves her with all of his
broken soul.”
― Anna Todd, quote from After Ever Happy
“I am a man who, from his youth upwards, has been filled with a profound conviction that the easiest way of life is the best.”
― Herman Melville, quote from Bartleby el escribiente
“Every time I pass church
I stop and make a visit
So when I'm carried in feet first
God won't say, "Who is it?”
― quote from The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio: How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less
“Of course I'm ignorant, that remains true at all events and is extremely distressing for me, but it does have the advantage that the ignorant man dares more, so I shall gladly put up with ignorance and its undoubtedly dire consequences for a while, as long as my strength lasts.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Slottet
Seven Years in Tibet...
The Time of the Hero
The Best and the Bri...
The Old Man and the...
Yayati: A Classic Ta...
BacklashBookQuoters 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.
