“...the worst thing about regret is that it makes you duck the chance of new regret, just as you get a glimmer that nothing is worth doing unless it has the potential to fuck up your whole life.
”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day
“Some idiotic things are well worth doing.”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day
“For, how else to seize such an instant? How to shout out into the empty air just the right words, and on cue? Frame a moment to last a lifetime?”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day
“But to anyone reasonable, my life will seem more or less normal-under-the-microscope, full of contingencies and incongruities none of us escapes and which do little harm in an existence that otherwise goes unnoticed.”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day
“(My greatest human flaw and strength, not surprisingly, is that I can always imagine anything--a marriage, a conversation, a government--as being different from how it is, a trait that might make one a top-notch trial lawyer or novelist or realtor, but that also seems to produce a somewhat less than reliable and morally feasible human being.)”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day
“Any rainy summer morning, of course, has the seeds of gloomy alienation sown in. But a rainy summer morning far from home - when your personal clouds don't move but hang - can easily produce the feeling of the world as seen from the grave. This I know.”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day
“All this is a natural part of the aging process, in which you find yourself with less to do and more opportunities to eat your guts out regretting everything you have done.”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day
“I don’t, after all, know what’s wrong with him, am not even certain anything is, or that wrong isn’t just a metaphor for something else, which may itself already be a metaphor. Though probably what’s amiss, if anything, is not much different from what’s indistinctly amiss with all of us at one time or another – we’re not happy, we don’t know why, and we drive ourselves loony trying to get better”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day
“Though finally the worst thing about regret is that it makes you duck the chance of suffering new regret just as you get a glimmer that nothing's worth doing unless it has the potential of to fuck up your whole life”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day
“when you’re young your opponent is the future; but when you’re not young, your opponent’s the past and everything you’ve done in it and the problem of getting away from it.”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day
“Such narrowly missed human connection as this can in fact be fatal, no matter who's at fault, and often results in unrecoverable free fall and a too-hasty conclusion that 'the whole goddamn thing's not worth bothering with or it wouldn't be so goddamn confusing all the goddamn time,' after which one party (or both) just wanders off and never thinks to look toward the other again. Such is the iffiness of romance.”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day
“« Voyez-vous, d’après mon expérience, c’est quand on a l’impression de ne pas progresser qu’on avance sans doute le plus. »”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day
“And I had the feeling he was far out ahead of me then and in many things. Any time spent with your child is partly a damn sad time, the sadness of life a-going, bright, vivid, each time a last. A loss. A glimpse into what could’ve been. It can be corrupting. I”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day
“Possibly this is one more version of "disappearing into your life", the way career telephone company bigwigs, overdutiful parents and owners of wholesale lumber companies are said to do and never know it. You simply reach a point at which everything looks the same but nothing matters much. There's no evidence you're dead, but you act that way.”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day
“Though finally the worst thing about regret is that it makes you duck the chance of suffering new regret just as you get a glimmer that nothing’s worth doing unless it has the potential to fuck up your whole life. A”
― Richard Ford, quote from Independence Day
Richard Ford
Born place: in Jackson, Mississippi, The United States
Born date February 16, 1944
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“Og nú heldur hann þeir svensku séu ekki jafngáfaðir og hann. Ég skal segja þér: þeir eru gáfaðri en hann, þeir eru svo gáfaðir að einginn kraftur fær þá til að trúa því að það samsafn af lúsugum betlurum norðrí raskati, sem kallar sig íslendinga og nú eru bráðum allir dauðir guðisélof, hafi skrifað fornsögurnar.”
― Halldór Kiljan Laxness, quote from Iceland's Bell
“The wind on the headland whined softly round them, and although, as they watched, Great-Uncle Merry’s expression did not change, they suddenly knew that some enormous emotion was flooding through him. Like an electric current it tingled the air, exciting and frightening at the same time; though they could not understand what it was.”
― Susan Cooper, quote from Over Sea, Under Stone
“Emily and Rachel had their hair cut short, and were allowed to do everything the boys did - to climb trees, swim, and trap animals and birds: they even had two pockets in their frocks.”
― Richard Hughes, quote from A High Wind in Jamaica
“Of all such reformers Mr. Sentiment is the most powerful. It is incredible the number of evil practices he has put down: it is to be feared he will soon lack subjects and that when he has made the working classes comfortable, and got bitter beer put into proper-sized pint bottles, there will be nothing further for him left to do. Mr. Sentiment is certainly a very powerful man, and perhaps not the less so that his good poor people are so very good; his hard rich people so very hard; and the genuinely honest so very honest. Namby-pamby in these days is not thrown away if it be introduced in the proper quarters. Divine peeresses are no longer interesting, though possessed of every virtue; but a pattern peasant or an immaculate manufacturing hero may talk as much twaddle as one of Mrs. Ratcliffe's heroines, and still be listened to. Perhaps, however, Mr. Sentiment's great attraction is in his second-rate characters. If his heroes and heroines walk upon stilts as heroes and heroines, I fear, ever must, their attendant satellites are as natural as though one met them in the street: they walk and talk like men and women, and live among our friends a rattling, lively life — yes, live, and will live till the names of their callings shall be forgotten in their own, and Buckett and Mrs. Gamp will be the only words left to us to signify detective police officer or a monthly nurse.”
― Anthony Trollope, quote from The Warden
“I didn’t want to go. I’m not a hero; I never have been. I just do what has to be done.”
― Seanan McGuire, quote from An Artificial Night
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Stranger in a Strang...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.
