“Hope is not a sin, neither is fidelity.”
― Nomi Eve, quote from Henna House
“Hope is not a sin, and neither is fidelity.”
― Nomi Eve, quote from Henna House
“Thank you, but I take no joy in my wedding.” “Of course you don’t, but still, you must act the part. I often take no joy in my spinsterhood; I have no babes to fill my arms, and yet by acting the part of it, I convince myself that I am not lonely. And sometimes it works.”
― Nomi Eve, quote from Henna House
“My family had been in a refugee camp for a year and I was thirty-one years old when the government of Israel arranged through secret channels to fly all the Jews of Yemen to Israel. It was unofficially called Operation Magic Carpet, and officially called Operation On Wings of Eagles. When our people refused to enter the airplanes out of fear—for especially our brethren from the North had no experience with modernity—our rabbis reminded them of divine passages. “This is the fulfillment of ancient prophecy,” they said. “The eagles that fly us to the Promised Land may be made of metal, but their wings are buoyed aloft by the breath of God.” Between June 1949 and September 1950 almost fifty thousand Yemenite Jews boarded transport planes and made some 380 flights from Aden to Israel in this secret operation.”
― Nomi Eve, quote from Henna House
“The great Tolstoy wrote of families. He said that every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
― Nomi Eve, quote from Henna House
“From the late 1940s through the early ’60s, the Arab world had disgorged its Jews. Just as it had rescued us Yemenites, Israel rescued whole communities, flying myriad secret and perilous missions into the heart of Arabia.”
― Nomi Eve, quote from Henna House
“Mrs. Blessing was surprised at how fluently she lied, much better than she’d done it years before, when it had been so much more important, at least to her. She realized that lying was easier than telling the truth because it had such nice smooth edges, not jagged with impossibility and inconvenience the way the truth so often was.”
― Anna Quindlen, quote from Blessings
“....Lived in curious but not unhappy isolation…subscribing to magazines nobody around them read, listening to programs on the national radio network which nobody around them listened to…”
― Alice Munro, quote from Runaway
“I am mad, I think. I am mad therefore I think. I am mad therefore I think I am.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Human Croquet
“Socialism has now become completely or almost completely identical with Bolshevism; that”
― Victor Klemperer, quote from I Will Bear Witness 1933-41 A Diary of the Nazi Years
“The capital-T Truth is about life before death.
It is about making it to 30, or maybe even 50, without wanting to shoot yourself in the head.
It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness: awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over: 'This is water. This is water. These Eskimos might be much more than they seem.'
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your education really is the job of a lifetime. And it commences now.
I wish you way more than luck.”
― David Foster Wallace, quote from This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life
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.