“And his eyes frighten me, too. They're the eyes of an old man, an old man who's seen so much in life that he no longer cares to go on living. They're not even desperate... just quiet and expectant, and very, very lonely, as if he were quite alone of his own free choice.”
― quote from I Am David
“Johannes had once said that violence and cruelty were just a stupid person's way of making himself felt, because it was easer to use your hands to strike a blow than to use your brain to find a logical and just solution to the problem.”
― quote from I Am David
“And it was most important to do what one knew was right, for otherwise the day might come when one could no longer tell the difference between right and wrong.”
― quote from I Am David
“Never let me hear you say it's someone else's fault. It often is, but you must never shirk your own responsibility ... You can't change others, but you can do something about a fault in yourself.”
― quote from I Am David
“There's always something when you're at fault, too, and that fault you must discover and learn to recognize and take the consequences of it.”
― quote from I Am David
“But Johannes had said, "Politeness is something you owe other people, because when you show a little courtesy, everything becomes easier and better. But first and foremost, it's something you owe yourself. You are David.”
― quote from I Am David
“Joy passed, but happiness never completely disappeared; a touch of it would always remain to remind one it had been there. It was happiness that made one smile, then.”
― quote from I Am David
“The sun glistened on a drop of water as it fell from his hand to his knee. David wiped it off, but it left no tidemark: there was no more dirt to rub away. He took a deep breath and shivered. He was David. Everything else was washed away, the camp, its smell, its touch--and now he was David, his own master, free--free as long as he could remain so.”
― quote from I Am David
“Americans were most likely good people...the only thing wrong with them, David thought, was that they spoke English very badly.”
― quote from I Am David
“Before he had come to the town he had known about nothing but death: here he had learnt to live, to decide things for himself; he had learnt what it felt like to wash in clean water in the sunshine until he was clean himself, and what it felt like to satisfy his hunger with food that tasted good; he had learnt the sound of laughter that was free from cruelty; he had learnt the meaning of beauty”
― quote from I Am David
“All suffering has an end, David, if only you wait long enough. Sorrow has its life like people. Sorrow is born and lives and dies. And when it's dead and gone, someone's left behind to remember it. Exactly like people.”
― quote from I Am David
“Violence and cruelty were just a stupid person's way of making himself felt, because it was easier to use your hands to strike a blow then to use your brain to find a logical and just solution to a problem.”
― quote from I Am David
“David thought living in a house was very difficult. It was not the house itself--that was lovely to be in--but the people. What was so difficult about them was that they constantly seemed to expect him to say and do things he would never have though of, and what appeared sensible and natural to him seemed to surprise them...”
― quote from I Am David
“God of the green pastures and the still waters, please don't help me. I want to do it by myself so that You'll know I've found something I can do for You ... I am David. Amen.”
― quote from I Am David
“You could not bribe honest people, but bad people would accept bribery.”
― quote from I Am David
“Violence and cruelty were just a stupid person's way of making himself felt, because it was easier to use your hands to strike a blow than use your brain to find a logical and just solution to a problem.”
― quote from I Am David
“Johannes said greedy people can never be happy, and I would so much like to know what it feels like to be happy. Johannes said that when you very much want something you haven't got, you no longer care for what you have got. I'm not sure I understand, but I suppose he meant that things are only worth having if you think they are.”
― quote from I Am David
“Angelo was a grown man, and here was one thing he was quite free to decide for himself, and yet he was ready to let others make up his mind for him...that could only be stupidity.”
― quote from I Am David
“He'd forgotten the most important condition that made it possible for him to go on living: that he should never again grow fond of anyone”
― quote from I Am David
“Ich hatte ja nicht geahnt, dass Wissen solche Glücksgefühle auslösen konnte. Als ich klein war, träumte ich davon einen ganzen Haufen Brot essen zu können. Jetzt waren meine Träumer größer geworden.”
― Yeonmi Park, quote from In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom
“The baby's large eyes settled on him, and though this has been one of his happiest nights in his whole life, it made him melancholy. He had read somewhere that babies are instinctively drawn to faces, that they will fixate even on drawings or abstract, facelike shapes, and round objects with markings that might resemble eye-mouth-nose. It was information that struck him as terribly sad, terribly lonely - to imagine the infants of the world scoping the blurry atmosphere above them for faces the way primitive people scrutinized the stars for patterns, the way castaways stare at the moon, the blinking of a satellite. It made him sad to think of the baby gathering information - a mind, a soul, slowly solidifying around these impressions, coming to understand cause and effect, coming out of a blank or fog into reality. Into a reality. The true terror, Jonah thought, the true mystery of life was not that we are all going to die, but that we were all born, that we were all once little babies like this, unknowing and slowly reeling in the world, gathering it loop by loop like a ball of string. The true terror was that we once didn't exist and then, through no fault of our own, we had to.”
― Dan Chaon, quote from You Remind Me of Me
“Porque siempre sabes donde estan las llaves de tu coche y porque puedes pensar en diez cosas a la vez. Porque no te echas para atras y porque tu cabello es como los rayos del sol. Porque dices la verdad y porque sabes como ser buena amiga. Y por miles de razones que todavia no he descubierto. Y por otros cientos que puede ser que nunca descubra. Pero se que te puedo decir lo que nunca pense podría decirselo a nadie.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Blood Brothers
“Did he mean me or Jenny Mullendore was a slut?" Joanne wondered. "Because honestly, I don't see how she has the time for slut activities with those two preschoolers of hers. Me, I've got lots of time.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from The Pagan Stone
“Time's passage through the memory is like molten glass that can be opaque or crystallize at any given moment at will: a thousand days are melted into one conversation, one glance, one hurt, and one hurt can be shattered and sprinkled over a thousand days.”
― Gloria Naylor, quote from The Women of Brewster Place
Wolf Island
How to Stop Worrying...
Prince of Thieves
The Shadow and the S...
The Unwanted: A Memo...
Groundwork of the Me...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.
