“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
“A Jewish man with his parents alive is half the time a helpless infant!”
― Philip Roth, quote from Portnoy's Complaint
“Not only the portraits on the walls, but also the shelves in the library were thinned out. The disappearance of certain books and brochures happened discretely, usually the day after the arrival of a new message from above. Rubashov made his sarcastic commentaries on it while dictating to Arlova, who received them in silence. Most of the works on foreign trade and currency disappeared from the shelves – their author, the People’s Commissar for Finance, had just been arrested; also nearly all old Party Congress reports treating the same subject; most books and reference-books on the history and antecedents of the Revolution; most works by living authors on problems of birth control; the manuals on the structure of the People’s Army; treatises on trade unionism and the right to strike in the People’s State; practically every study of the problems of political constitution more than two years old, and, finally, even the volumes of the Encyclopedia published by the Academy – a new revised edition being promised shortly.
New books arrived, too: the classics of social science appeared with new footnotes and commentaries, the old histories were replaced by new histories, the old memoirs of dead revolutionary leaders were replaced by new memoirs of the same defunct. Rubashov remarked jokingly to Arlova that the only thing left to be done was to publish a new and revised edition of the back numbers of all newspapers.”
― Arthur Koestler, quote from Darkness at Noon
“...it seemed to me that the entire world was like a palace with countless rooms whose doors opened into one another. We were able to pass from one room to the next only by exercising out memories and imaginations, but most of us, in our laziness, rarely exercised these capacities, and forever remained in the same room”
― Orhan Pamuk, quote from My Name is Red
“Be always drunken. Nothing else matters: that is the only question. If you would not feel the horrible burden of Time weighing on your shoulders and crushing you to the earth, be drunken continually.
Drunken with what? With wine, with poetry, or with virtue, as you will. But be drunken.”
― Eugene O'Neill, quote from Long Day's Journey Into Night
“I want the people I love to get up and speak about me, and even if you cry it'll be OK. I want you to say honest things.”
― Jenny Downham, quote from Before I Die
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.