Quotes from Johnno

David Malouf ·  256 pages

Rating: (723 votes)


“Brisbane is so sleepy, so slatternly, so sprawlingly unlovely… It is simply the most ordinary place in the world…It was so shabby and makeshift … a place where poetry could never occur.”
― David Malouf, quote from Johnno


“Still the fact remains, he had me hooked. As he had, of course, from the beginning. I had been writing my book about Johnno from the moment we met.”
― David Malouf, quote from Johnno


“I might grow old in Brisbane, but I would never grow up.”
― David Malouf, quote from Johnno


“The hundred possibilities a situation contains may be more significant than the occurrence of any of them, and metaphor truer in the long run than fact.”
― David Malouf, quote from Johnno


“Now as I began to sort through his “effects” it occurred to me how little I had really known him … I had forced upon my father the character that fitted most easily with my image of myself; to have had to admit to any complexity in him would have compromised my own.”
― David Malouf, quote from Johnno



About the author

David Malouf
Born place: in Brisbane, Australia
Born date March 20, 1934
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Lying here and looking up at the stars like this, it makes me feel like I’m lying on a planet. It’s so wide. So infinite
-Belly Conklin”
― Jenny Han, quote from We'll Always Have Summer


“What is a Gallagher Girl?" Liz asked one final time. "She's a genius, a scientist, a heroine, a spy. And now we are at the end of our time at school, and the one thing I know for certain is this: a Gallagher Girl is whatever she wants to be.
― Ally Carter, quote from United We Spy


“Natural selection is a beguiling counterfeiter of deliberate purpose.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Ancestor's Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution


“Honor wears different coats to different eyes.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, quote from The Guns of August


“It is awful to contemplate this sort of life, in which one would always be forced into motion by a variety of mysterious and powerful forces, never staying anywhere for long, never finding a safe place one could call home, never able to turn the tables for very long, just as the Baudelaire orphans found it awful to contemplate their own lives [...] just when it seemed they might break out of the tedious cycle of unfortunate events in which they found themselves trapped.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Grim Grotto


Interesting books

Lord of Shadows
(45.2K)
Lord of Shadows
by Cassandra Clare
Lost Illusions
(7.1K)
Lost Illusions
by Honoré de Balzac
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
(49.7K)
Nothing to Envy: Ord...
by Barbara Demick
When It Rains
(15.7K)
When It Rains
by Lisa De Jong
Dragon Bound
(34.9K)
Dragon Bound
by Thea Harrison
Rules of Civility
(99.2K)
Rules of Civility
by Amor Towles

About BookQuoters

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.