“It took him a while to figure out that gaining an audience was not the same thing as gaining friends.”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir
“Mother's got romantic notions about toiling the land - or mostly, about her children toiling the land. And with fifteen acres, there's always something that needs toiling with.”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir
“Seems we can never just be brother and sister like in other families. Our whole lives, people have felt an urge to make up special names for what we are. at Lafayette Christian, we were the 'Oreo twins' or 'Kimberly and Arnold' after the characters on Diff'rent Strokes. And while those nicknames bugged us, they were certainly preferable to what they call us at Harrison”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir
“Life may not be fair, but when you have someone to believe in, life can be managed, and sometimes, even miraculous.”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir
“So we are drawn to graveyards, where we can be close to the dead and ponder their fate as well as our own.”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir
“The first time it happened, I laid there marveling at the beauty of it, wondering why God would forbid such bliss when He makes us endure so much misery.”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir
“It's just after three o'clock when we hit County Road 50. The temperature has swelled past ninety and the sun scorches our backs as we swerve our bikes around pools of bubbling tar.”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir
“So much for the famous 'Hoosier hospitality.' When we moved to our new house, no one stopped by with strawberry rhubarb pie or warm wishes. Our neighbors must have taken one look at David and Jerome and locked their doors - and minds - against us”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir
“Neither of us uttered a word about what happened. We never do. But I can't smudge it from my mind. The farm boys' sneering red faces. The runt shaking the fence. The brown lump of spit tobacco. The anguish in David's eyes. They don't know the first thing about us; they just hate us because we're black”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir
“As we paint each other's nails Cinnamon Vixen, I consider telling her how bad things are at home. After she and Dan and Laura left for college, everything got worse. Mother's mood swings, Dad's violence, the name-calling at school.”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir
“Many readers say they also feel like outcasts in their hometowns, oppressed by religionists, racists, homophobes, or other pea-brained busybodies. The advice I give them is this: If you feel like a misfit in the place where you were born, move somewhere else. I did. I now reside in the most progressive town in the country—Berkeley, California.”
― Julia Scheeres, quote from Jesus Land: A Memoir
“She'd laugh at odd times as we talked and this flustered me pleasantly and made me laugh too, as if we both understood something we couldn't say.”
― Tobias Wolff, quote from Old School
“I also thought about that seminar classmate on Adam's ninth birthday. Adam had insisted on going to a pizza-and-games arcade for his party. The only person he'd invited besides his sisters was someone I'll call Lonnie, whom Adam claimed to be his girlfriend. Although I had often heard Adam sing about Lonnie, I had never met her, or seen Adam interact with any girl. I was afraid that he would start humping her leg the second she came in range. These were fears I'd sustained since before he was born; I though all people with Down syndrome were grossly overaffectionate. I was grossly wrong.”
― Martha N. Beck, quote from Expecting Adam: A True Story of Birth, Rebirth, and Everyday Magic
“Scrying the wind is very difficult, Tris,” Niko said gently. “It’s like scrying the future. You’re assailed with thousands of images — fragments, really. It drives many who try it insane.” “You learned to scry the future,” Tris pointed out. “And a number of people have informed me they think I am mad,” Niko replied, his voice very dry.”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Shatterglass
“Still in the black hemisphere the stars blazed and slowly wheeled; beneath them, Will felt so infinitesimally small that it seemed impossible he should even exist. Immensity pressed in on him, terrifying, threatening--and then, in a swift flash of movement like a dance, like the glint of a leaping fish, came a flick of brightness in the sky from a shooting star... He heard Bran give a small chirrup of delight, a spark struck from the same bright sudden joy that filled his own being.”
― Susan Cooper, quote from The Grey King
“He wanted to be a poet,' someone else put in while Maggie hugged Tim and patted his back. 'Said he'd only lacked the words to be one.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Born in Fire
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.