“The beginning is the word and the end is silence. And in between are all the stories.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Human Croquet
“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
“I wanted her for what she was, but when I got her I wanted her to change.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Human Croquet
“I suppose a better sister would have set about weaving him a shirt from nettles and throwing it over his furred-over body so that he could be released from his enchantment and resume his human form. I give him some cat food instead.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Human Croquet
“... the doors of perception are hanging crazily off their hinges these days.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Human Croquet
“Do you keep time in the same place that you save it? If so why is it always so difficult to find? It must be in a very safe place.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Human Croquet
“I'm not myself," she said and then laughed maniacally, "but God knows who I am.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Human Croquet
“Before the beginning is the void and the void belongs in neither time nor space and is therefore beyond our imagination.
Nothing will come of nothing unless it's the beginning of the world. This is how it begins, with the word and the word is life. The void is transformed by a gigantic firecracker allowing time to dawn and imagination to begin.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Human Croquet
“Vinny rarely leaves the house so when she does it's an occasion of some importance to her. She spends a lot of time looking forward to a glimpse of the outside world and then, when she returns, even more time complaining about it.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Human Croquet
“I don't think I'd mind working on a cheese counter. It would leave my mind free to do whatever it wanted - which is nothing in particular, it's true, but I like being alone in my head, I'm used to it.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Human Croquet
“Maybe we're all the living dead, reconstituted from the dust of the dead.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Human Croquet
“I'm a shadow of my former self," she announces. Vinny was a shadow to begin with, now she's a shadow of a shadow.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Human Croquet
“Is this normal, I wonder? But then, what is normal?”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Human Croquet
“Ah, but the rich are different,’ the footman said, ‘they take a lot more looking after.”
― Kate Atkinson, quote from Human Croquet
“It’s just a lot of me. Way too much of me.”
― Becky Albertalli, quote from The Upside of Unrequited
“She's letting out her feelings. The scary thing is not being able to do that. When your feelings build up and harden and die inside, then you're in big trouble.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Norvegų giria
“It was as if a blade had shucked his heart like an oyster and stolen the beauty within. He said his heart never started beating again, it just started working and I never understood the difference, not until I was much older anyway, when I learnt that coming back from the dead is not quite the same as coming back to life.”
― Sarah Winman, quote from A Year of Marvellous Ways
“In the Ummah, there was no tradition of veiling until around 627 C.E., when the so-called “verse of hijab” suddenly descended upon the community. That verse, however, was addressed not to women in general, but exclusively to Muhammad’s wives:”
― Reza Aslan, quote from No god but God: The Origins, Evolution and Future of Islam
“Vanish.
Pass into nothingness: the Keats line that frightened her.
Fade as the blue nights fade, go as the brightness goes.
Go back into the blue.
I myself placed her ashes in the wall.
I myself saw the cathedral doors locked at six.
I know what it is I am now experiencing.
I know what the frailty is, I know what the fear is.
The fear is not for what is lost.
What is lost is already in the wall.
What is lost is already behind the locked doors.
The fear is for what is still to be lost.
You may see nothing still to be lost.
Yet there is no day in her life on which I do not see her.”
― Joan Didion, quote from Blue Nights
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.