“I hate to think that all my current experiences will someday become stories with no point.”
― Bill Watterson, quote from It's a Magical World
“Wow, it really snowed last night! Isn't it wonderful? Everything familiar has disappeared! The world looks brand new!
A new year ... a fresh, clean start! It's like having a big white sheet of paper to draw on! A day full of possibilities! It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy ... let's go exploring!”
― Bill Watterson, quote from It's a Magical World
“In the short term, it would make me happy to go play outside. In the long term, it would make me happier to do well at school and become successful. But in the VERY long term, I know which will make better memories.”
― Bill Watterson, quote from It's a Magical World
“The secret to enjoying your job is to have a hobby that's even worse”
― Bill Watterson, quote from It's a Magical World
“If good things lasted forever, would we appreciate how precious they are?”
― Bill Watterson, quote from It's a Magical World
“It's a magical world, Hobbes, ol' buddy... Let's go exploring!”
― Bill Watterson, quote from It's a Magical World
“Calvin: Trick or Treat!
Adult: Where's your costume? What are you supposed to be?
Calvin: I'm yet another resource-consuming kid in an overpopulated planet, raised to an alarming extent by Madison Avenue and Hollywood, poised with my cynical and alienated peers to take over the world when you're old and weak!
...Boy, am I scary or what?”
― Bill Watterson, quote from It's a Magical World
“Even when you look for it, you're never prepared for it.”
― Bill Watterson, quote from It's a Magical World
“Calvin: Dear Santa, before I submit life to your scrutiny, I demand to know who made YOU the matter of my fate?! Who are YOU to question my behavior, HUH??? What gives you the right?!
Hobbes: Santa makes the toys, so he gets to decide who to give them to.
Calvin: Oh.”
― Bill Watterson, quote from It's a Magical World
“Things I will never like: 1. Drying off with a cold, damp towel. 2. The feeling of seaweed wrapping around my legs. 3. Anything that was popular in the 70's. 4. Licorice, yam, or raisins. 5. That high-pitched screech that babies make. 6. Writhing maggots.”
― Bill Watterson, quote from It's a Magical World
“When a person pauses in mid-sentence to choose a word, that's the best time to jump in and change the subject! It's like an interception in football! You grab the others guy's idea and run the opposite way with it! The more sentences you complete, the higher your score! The idea is to block the other guy's thoughts and express your own! That's how you win!
Conversations aren't contests!
Ok, a point for you, but I'm still ahead.”
― Bill Watterson, quote from It's a Magical World
“Some people are pragmatists, taking things as they come and making the best of the choices available. Some people are idealists, standing for principle and refusing to compromise. And some people just act on any whim that enters their heads.
I wonder which one YOU are.
I pragmatically turn my whims into principles!”
― Bill Watterson, quote from It's a Magical World
“How long are you going to wait for this guy?”
I’m thrown by his sudden shift. “Ah . . . I don’t know.”
“Give me your keys.”
“What?”
“Give me your keys. I’m going to change your tire while we’re waiting.”
I fish in my purse and come up with a handful of keys. “You’re going to—”
“Stay in the car.” He grabs the keys and practically yanks them out of my fingers. Then he slams the door in my face.
I watch him in the path of his headlights, mystified. He opens my trunk, and, moments later, emerges with the spare tire. He lays it beside the car, then pulls something else from the darkened space. I’ve never changed a tire, so I have no idea what he’s doing. His movements are quick and efficient, though.
I shouldn’t be sitting here, just watching, but I can’t help myself. There’s something compelling about him. Dozens of cars have passed, but he was the only one to stop—and he’s helping me despite the fact that I’ve been less than kind to him all night.
He gets down on the pavement—on the wet pavement, in the rain—and slides something under the car. A hand brushes wet hair off his face.
I can’t sit here and watch him do this.
He doesn’t look at me when I approach. “I told you to wait in the car.”
“So you’re one of those guys? Thinks the ‘little woman’ should wait in the car?”
“When the little woman doesn’t know her tires are bald and her battery could barely power a stopwatch?” He attaches a steel bar to . . . something . . . and starts twisting it. “Yeah. I am.”
My pride flinches. “So what are you saying?” I ask, deadpan. “You don’t want my help?”
His smile is rueful. “You’re kind of funny when you’re not so busy being judgmental.”
“You’re lucky I’m not kicking you while you’re down there.”
He loses the smile but keeps his eyes on whatever he’s doing. “Try it, sister.”
― Brigid Kemmerer, quote from Letters to the Lost
“We are travelers on a cosmic journey,stardust,swirling and dancing in the eddies and whirlpools of infinity. Life is eternal. We have stopped for a moment to encounter each other, to meet, to love, to share.This is a precious moment. It is a little parenthesis in eternity.”
― Paulo Coelho, quote from Alkimist
“The basic project of art is always to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you, and in this way pass from feeling to meaning. It's not something that committees can do. It's not a task achieved by groups or by movements. It's done by individuals, each person mediating in some way between a sense of history and an experience of the world.”
― Robert Hughes, quote from The Shock of the New
“Sumptuary laws, as they were known, laid down precisely, if preposterously, who could wear what.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from Shakespeare: The World as Stage
“That’s the role of poetry, Ciri. To say what others cannot utter.”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, quote from Time of Contempt
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.