“There is only one page left to write on. I will fill it with words of only one syllable. I love. I have loved. I will love.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“Noble deeds and hot baths are the best cures for depression.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“How I wish I lived in a Jane Austen novel!”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“I shouldn't think even millionaires could eat anything nicer than new bread and real butter and honey for tea.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“I only want to write. And there's no college for that except life.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“When I read a book, I put in all the imagination I can, so that it is almost like writing the book as well as reading it - or rather, it is like living it. It makes reading so much more exciting, but I don't suppose many people try to do it.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“I write this sitting in the kitchen sink.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“Perhaps watching someone you love suffer can teach you even more than suffering yourself can.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“Why is summer mist romantic and autumn mist just sad?”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“Contemplation seems to be about the only luxury that costs nothing.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“I like seeing people when they can't see me.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“I am a restlessness inside a stillness inside a restlessness.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“Even a broken heart doesn't warrant a waste of good paper.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“...I have noticed that when things happen in one's imaginings, they never happen in one's life, so I am curbing myself.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“Perhaps if I make myself write I shall find out what is wrong with me.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“And no bathroom on earth will make up for marrying a bearded man you hate.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“He stood staring into the wood for a minute, then said: "What is it about the English countryside — why is the beauty so much more than visual? Why does it touch one so?"
He sounded faintly sad. Perhaps he finds beauty saddening — I do myself sometimes. Once when I was quite little I asked father why this was and he explained that it was due to our knowledge of beauty's evanescence, which reminds us that we ourselves shall die. Then he said I was probably too young to understand him; but I understood perfectly.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“Just to be in love seemed the most blissful luxury I had ever known. The thought came to me that perhaps it is the loving that counts, not the being loved in return—that perhaps true loving can never know anything but happiness. For a moment I felt that I had discovered a great truth.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“Oh, it is wonderful to wake up in the morning with things to look forward to!”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“I was wandering around as usual, in my unpleasantly populated sub-conscious...”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“Ah, but you're the insidious type--Jane Eyre with of touch of Becky Sharp. A thoroughly dangerous girl.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“It is rather exciting to write by moonlight.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“Truthfulness so often goes with ruthlessness. ”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“I have noticed that rooms which are extra clean feel extra cold”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“So many of the loveliest things in England are melancholy.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“I suppose the best kind of spring morning is the best weather God has to offer.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“It's odd how different a house feels when one is alone in it. It makes it easier to think rather private thoughts...”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“Rose doesn’t like the flat country, but I always did – flat country seems to give the sky such a chance.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“There is something revolting about the way girls' minds so often jump to marriage long before they jump to love.”
― Dodie Smith, quote from I Capture the Castle
“Is it possible that future generations will regard our present agribuisness and eating practices in much the same way we now view Nero's entertainments or Mengele's experiments? My own initial reaction is that such a comparison is hysterical, extreme - and yet the reason it seems extreme to me appears to be that I believe animals are less morally important than human behings; and when it comes to defending such a belief, even to myself, I have to acknowledge that (a) I have an obvious selfish interest in this belief, since I like to eat certain kinds of animals and want to be able to keep doing it, and (b) I haven't succeeded in working out any sort of personal ethical system in which the belief is truly defensible instead of just selfishly convenient.”
― David Foster Wallace, quote from Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
“So now you think the augury was misinterpreted. It said you had to go get someone. It didn’t say who that someone was.”
― Stephen R. Donaldson, quote from The Mirror of Her Dreams
“Isn't it a characteristic of the age we live in that it has made everyone in a way a migrant and a member of a minority?”
― Amin Maalouf, quote from In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong
“We often told ourselves off for wasting time in chairs, fully dressed, talking, when we could be doing the same, lying down in bed, face to face and naked. That precious time before love-making is ill-served by the pseudo-clinical term, ‘foreplay’. The world would narrow and deepen, our voices would sink into the warmth of our bodies, the conversation became associative and unpredictable. Everything was touch and breath. Certain simple phrases came to me which I didn’t say out loud because they sounded so banal - Here we are, or, This again or Yes, this. Like a moment in a recurring dream, these spacious, innocent minutes were forgotten until we were back inside them. When we were, our lives returned to the essentials and began again. When we fell silent, we would lie so close we were mouth to mouth, delaying the union which bound us all the more because of this prelude.”
― Ian McEwan, quote from Enduring Love
“...and into this bizarrerie, as into all his others, I quietly fell; giving myself up to his wild whims with a perfect abandon.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales
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.