“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
“Gossiping is essential for survival because the complex mechanics of social interactions are constantly changing, so we have to make sense of this ever-shifting social terrain. This is Level II consciousness at work. But once we hear a piece of gossip, we immediately run simulations to determine how this will affect our own standing in the community, which moves us to Level III consciousness. Thousands of years ago, in fact, gossip was the only way to obtain vital information about the tribe. One’s very life often depended on knowing the latest gossip.”
― Michio Kaku, quote from The Future of the Mind: The Scientific Quest to Understand, Enhance, and Empower the Mind
“Ginny Davis—poor, dead Ginny—had lent Connie a set of yoga DVDs that looked like they’d come from the ancient 1990s.”
― Barry Lyga, quote from Game
“In a state of pseudo-death you restore your substance.”
― Marlene van Niekerk, quote from Agaat
“EVERYONE SAYS THAT GETTING over somebody ‘just takes time’ and that one day it will stop hurting and the door will open for you to move on. We are also told that love is eternal; something extraordinary that will stay with you forever.”
― Natasha Preston, quote from Broken Silence
“Sometimes in life you’re going to win and sometimes you’re going to lose. But just because you lose doesn’t mean the other guy needs to win.”
― John Scalzi, quote from Fuzzy Nation
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.