“Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.”
― quote from Interesting Times: The Play
“Rincewind could scream for mercy in nineteen languages, and just scream in another forty-four.”
― quote from Interesting Times: The Play
“Just because it's not nice doesn't mean it's not miraculous.”
― quote from Interesting Times: The Play
“Natural selection saw to it that professional heroes who at a crucial moment tended to ask themselves questions like 'What is my purpose in life?' very quickly lacked both.”
― quote from Interesting Times: The Play
“The Four Horsemen whose Ride presages the end of the world are known to be Death, War, Famine, and Pestilence. But even less significant events have their own Horsemen. For example, the Four Horsemen of the Common Cold are Sniffles, Chesty, Nostril, and Lack of Tissues; the Four Horsemen whose appearance foreshadows any public holiday are Storm, Gales, Sleet, and Contra-flow.”
― quote from Interesting Times: The Play
“Barbarism? Hah! When we kills people we do it there and then, lookin' 'em in the eye, and we'd be happy to buy 'em a drink in the next world, no harm done. I never knew a barbarian who cut up people slowly in little rooms, or tortured women to make 'em look pretty, or put poison in people's grub. Civilization? If that's civilization, you can shove it where the sun don't shine!”
― quote from Interesting Times: The Play
“Your wife is a big hippo! My face is melting! My face is meltinnnnggg!”
― quote from Interesting Times: The Play
“Human beings have always preferred common sense to logic.”
― quote from Interesting Times: The Play
“Good so be would you if, duff plum of helping second A," said the Bursar.
The table fell silent.
"Did anyone understand that?" said Ridcully.
The Bursar was not technically insane. He had passed through the rapids of insanity som time previously, and was now sculling around in some peaceful pool on the other side. He was quite often coherent, although not by normal human standards.”
― quote from Interesting Times: The Play
“Oh... and Bacon Surprise.'
REALLY? WHAT IS SO SURPRISING ABOUT BACON?
'I don't know. I suppose it comes as something of a shock to the pig.”
― quote from Interesting Times: The Play
“Many an ancient lord's last words had been, "You can't kill me because I've got magic aaargh.”
― quote from Interesting Times: The Play
“That bit where that lad sprang backwards right across the room with them axes in his hands was impressive, though."
"Yeah."
"You didn't ought to have stuck your sword out like that, I thought."
"He's learned an important lesson."
"It won't do him much good now where he's gone.”
― quote from Interesting Times: The Play
“There was, he thought, probably something in the idea that there were only a few people in the world. There were lots of bodies, but only a few people. That's why you kept running into the same ones.”
― quote from Interesting Times: The Play
“It was a store with multiple personality disorder. Or a shop just trying to survive.”
― Angela Marsons, quote from Evil Games
“Doll always said, Just be quiet. Whatever it is, just wait for it to be over. Everything ends sometime.”
― Marilynne Robinson, quote from Lila
“We are all broken by something. We have all hurt someone and have been hurt. We all share the condition of brokenness even if our brokenness is not equivalent. I desperately wanted mercy for Jimmy Dill and would have done anything to create justice for him, but I couldn’t pretend that his struggle was disconnected from my own. The ways in which I have been hurt—and have hurt others—are different from the ways Jimmy Dill suffered and caused suffering. But our shared brokenness connected us. Paul Farmer, the renowned physician who has spent his life trying to cure the world’s sickest and poorest people, once quoted me something that the writer Thomas Merton said: We are bodies of broken bones. I guess I’d always known but never fully considered that being broken is what makes us human. We all have our reasons. Sometimes we’re fractured by the choices we make; sometimes we’re shattered by things we would never have chosen. But our brokenness is also the source of our common humanity, the basis for our shared search for comfort, meaning, and healing. Our shared vulnerability and imperfection nurtures and sustains our capacity for compassion. We have a choice. We can embrace our humanness, which means embracing our broken natures and the compassion that remains our best hope for healing. Or we can deny our brokenness, forswear compassion, and, as a result, deny our own humanity. I thought of the guards strapping Jimmy Dill to the gurney that very hour. I thought of the people who would cheer his death and see it as some kind of victory. I realized they were broken people, too, even if they would never admit it. So many of us have become afraid and angry. We’ve become so fearful and vengeful that we’ve thrown away children, discarded the disabled, and sanctioned the imprisonment of the sick and the weak—not because they are a threat to public safety or beyond rehabilitation but because we think it makes us seem tough, less broken. I thought of the victims of violent crime and the survivors of murdered loved ones, and how we’ve pressured them to recycle their pain and anguish and give it back to the offenders we prosecute. I thought of the many ways we’ve legalized vengeful and cruel punishments, how we’ve allowed our victimization to justify the victimization of others. We’ve submitted to the harsh instinct to crush those among us whose brokenness is most visible. But simply punishing the broken—walking away from them or hiding them from sight—only ensures that they remain broken and we do, too. There is no wholeness outside of our reciprocal humanity.”
― Bryan Stevenson, quote from Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption
“You’re a Frankenstein!”
“Don’t confuse the monster with the creator.”
― Stephen King, quote from End of Watch
“They need to control you through your emotions, making you a slave to the state by destroying your individuality, and your ability to react to situations based on your own experience of the world.”
― Yeonmi Park, quote from In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl's Journey to Freedom
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.