“I am a woman built upon the wreckage of myself.”
― Chris Cleave, quote from Incendiary
“Before you bombed my boy Osama I always thought an explosion was such a quick thing but now I know better. The flash is over very fast but the fire catches hold inside you and the noise never stops…I live in an inferno where you could shiver with cold Osama. This life is a deafening roar but listen. You could hear a pin drop.”
― Chris Cleave, quote from Incendiary
“You may think that's funny Osama but you never can squeeze every last bit of pride out of a human being. It's like a tube of toothpaste. You can twist it and you can crush it but there's always a tiny bit left isn't there?”
― Chris Cleave, quote from Incendiary
“I'm going to write to you about the emptiness that was left when you took my boy away. I'm going to write so you can look into my empty life and see what a human boy really is from the shape of the hole he leaves behind. I want you to feel that hole in your heart and stroke it with your hands and cut your fingers on its sharp edges.”
― Chris Cleave, quote from Incendiary
“I hope this letter reaches you (Osama) anyway. I hope it finds you before the Americans do otherwise I'm going to wish I hadn't bothered aren't I?”
― Chris Cleave, quote from Incendiary
“This life is a deafening roar but listen. You could hear a pin drop.”
― Chris Cleave, quote from Incendiary
“Come to Me and we will blow the world back together WITH INCREDIBLE NOISE AND FURY.”
― Chris Cleave, quote from Incendiary
“Murder me with bombs you poor lonely sod I will only build myself again and stronger. I am too stupid to know better I am a woman built on the wreckage of myself.”
― Chris Cleave, quote from Incendiary
“It was not warm and not cold. There was no wind and the sky was very low and grey but it wasn't raining. It was like they'd completely run out of weather.”
― Chris Cleave, quote from Incendiary
“London is a city built on the wreckage of itself Osama. It's had more comebacks that The Evil Dead. It's been flattened by storms and flooded out and rotted with plague. Londoners jut took a deep breath and put the kettle on. Then the whole thing burned down. Every last stick of it. ... People thought it was the end of the world. BUt the Londoners got up the next day and the world hadn't ended so they rebuilt the city in 3 years stronger and taller.”
― Chris Cleave, quote from Incendiary
“I was hoping my life might make more sense from a great height.”
― Chris Cleave, quote from Incendiary
“You ever wonder why an East Eng girl like me hasn't got much in the way of family? Well here's the reasons Petra. World War 1. World War 2. Falklands War. Gulf War 1. Gulf War 2 and the War on Drugs. You can take your pick because I've lost whole bloody chunks of my family in all of them.”
― Chris Cleave, quote from Incendiary
“That is the nature of this madness. It fills the sky with barrage balloons and people's eyes with hate.”
― Chris Cleave, quote from Incendiary
Chris Cleave
Born place: in London, The United Kingdom
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“We were only granted 30 minutes every Thursday. Today may be the last day...and so we continued to talk, even about trivial little things, and even if our throats became sore...”
― Gong Jiyoung, quote from Watashitachi no Shiawase na Jikan
“It is true that the sky was always beautiful but I don't remember marvelling at sunset or gazing at the dawn of a new day. Survival does not allow time for poetic reflection.”
― Izzeldin Abuelaish, quote from I Shall Not Hate: A Gaza Doctor's Journey on the Road to Peace and Human Dignity
“I met Jose Angelico the way I meet many of my customers. I have a workshop on the cemetery road, just past the coffin makers. I specialize in the small, simple stone. I am very aware that my clients have next to nothing, and renting the grave has often taken most of their money. So I modify and modify and get down to the very lowest cost. The dead, however, must have that stone: the reminder, the eternal reminder, that this man, this woman, this child---existed. On some of the graves the name is marked in paint, or even pen, and everyone knows how sad that is. Make something out of stone, I say, and noone touches the grave.The poor are not buried, you see. There is not enough ground here any more, so in the Naravo they build upwards. The graves of the poor are concrete boxes, each just big enough for the coffin. They go up and up---in some parts twenty boxes high. A funeral here is to slide the coffin in and watch the sealing of the compartment. Part of my service is that I cement the stone that I've made into place, and thus seal the chamber.”
― Andy Mulligan, quote from Trash
“I come," replied he, "to thee, Manfred, usurper of the principality of Otranto, from the renowned and invincible Knight, the Knight of the Gigantic Sabre: in the name of his Lord, Frederic, Marquis of Vicenza, he demands the Lady Isabella, daughter of that Prince, whom thou hast basely and traitorously got into thy power, by bribing her false guardians during his absence; and he requires thee to resign the principality of Otranto, which thou hast usurped from the said Lord Frederic, the nearest of blood to the last rightful Lord, Alfonso the Good. If thou dost not instantly comply with these just demands, he defies thee to single combat to the last extremity.”
― Horace Walpole, quote from The Castle of Otranto
“When merely meeting someone is ridden with angst and open to misinterpretation, is it any wonder she is so hopeless at relationships.”
― Sarah Rayner, quote from One Moment, One Morning
Cross and Burn
Treason
Mona Lisa Overdrive
If You Come Softly
Girls of Riyadh
Following the Equato...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.
