“There is lust and then there is love. They are related, but still very different things. To indulge in one requires little but honeyed speech and a change of clothes; to obtain the other, by contrast, a man must give up his rib. In return, his woman will undo the sin of Eve, and bring him back into Paradise.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Everything we say is a story. But nothing we say is just a story.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“You were right and I was wrong. When life hurts more than death, it is not worth living.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“I did not know my soul until I saw it's reflection in your eyes.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“There is a trick to flying. The angels told me." He had smiled at my wide-eyed awe. "You need to forget everything you know as a human being. When you are human, you discover that there is great power in hating the earth. And it can almost make you fly. But it never will."
I had frowned, not quite understanding him. "So, what's the trick?"
"Love the sky.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Don't underestimate the power of events that happened a long time ago. That is the tragic flaw of modern man.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“You owe me nothing, but I want everything.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“I’ll be back tomorrow,” he said, “at nine o’clock. Don’t open your door to anyone else.”
“Not even my balcony door?”
“Especially not your balcony door.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Perhaps. But the firstborn of hope is tragedy.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“.... "death turns all men into great lovers. Would that they were equally ardent while the lady was still alive!”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“She laughed out loud, a warm, knowing laughter that made me once again wonder about the secret ingredient in these women’s lives. Whatever it was, I was clearly missing it. It was so much more than just self-confidence; it seemed to be the ability to love oneself, enthusiastically and unsparingly, body and soul, naturally followed by the assumption that every man on the planet is dying to get in on the act.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Think about it. He drinks poison. What kind of man drinks poison? She is the one who stabs herself with his dagger. The manly way.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Was I insane? Maybe. But then, there were many different kinds of insanity. Aunt Rose had always taken for granted that the whole world was in a state of constantly fluctuating madness, and that a neurosis was not an illness, but a fact of life, like pimples. Some have more, some have less, but only truly abnormal people have none at all. This commonsense philosophy had consoled me many times before, and it did now, too.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“By the time we left college, I had become my own image: a dandelion in the flower bed of society. Kinda cute, but still a weed.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“If you let go of me now,” I whispered, stretching against him, “it could be another six hundred years before you find me again. Are you willing to take that risk?”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Peppo!" I yelled, pulling at my cousin's suspenders. "I really don't want to be arrested, okay?"
"Don't worry!" Peppo turned a corner and accelerated as he spoke. "I go too fast for police!”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“But he is an Italian," was Umberto's sensible reply. "He doesn't care if you break some law a little bit, as long as you wear beautiful shoes. Are you wearing beautiful shoes? Are you wearing the shoes I gave you?...principessa?"
I looked down at my flip-flops. "I guess I'm toast.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Great love, you believe, carries the seeds of great sorrow. Well, perhaps you are right. Perhaps the wise spurn one to remain safe from the other, but I should rather choose to have my eyes burnt in their sockets than to have been born without.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“It's what we call a dolce pazzia... a sweet madness. Once you feel it, you will never want to leave it.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Romeo was cute …”
“Cute?” Alessandro rolled his eyes. “What kind of man is cute?”
“… and an excellent dancer …”
“Romeo had feet of lead! He said so himself!”
“… but most importantly,” I concluded, “he had nice hands!”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“I am sorry I didn’t tell you the truth before. I was hoping I wouldn’t have to. You kept asking about Romeo and what he was really like. I was hoping that”—he smiled wistfully—“you would recognize me.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“as a bird swoops down on it's prey, and assumes this land bound wretch into heaven, so did romeo steal her lips before they fled him again. suspended somewhere between cherubs and devils, his quarry ceased to buck, and he spread his wings wide and let the rising wind carry them off across the sky, until even the predator himself had lost every hope of returning home. within that one embrace, [he] became aware of a feeling of certainty he had not thought possible for anyone - even the virtuous. with her in his arms, all other women, past, present, and future, simply ceased to exist.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“After the dress rehearsal that afternoon, someone had misplaced the vial of poison, and for lack of better, Romeo would have to commit suicide by eating Tic Tacs.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Look,' I said, struggling to keep up, 'I just wanna make one thing absolutely clear. I don't believe in guns. I just want peace. Okay?'
Alessandro stopped in the middle of the corridor, took out the gun, and wrapped my hand around it before I realized what he was doing. 'Can you feel that? That's a gun. It exists. And there are a lot of people out there who do believe in it. So, excused me for taking care of them so you can have your peace.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“Everything has a shadow-side. In my opinion, that is what makes life interesting.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“When the old men fight, the young people die.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“...it is fifty percent what they see, and fifty percent what they think they see.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“...and whether or not we had now paid our dues, he was my blessing, and I was his...”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“She had died peacefully, in her sleep, after an evening of listening to all of her favorite Fred Astaire songs, one crackling record after another. Once the last chord of the last piece had died out, she had stood up and opened the French doors to the garden outside, perhaps waiting to breathe in the honeysuckle one more time.”
― Anne Fortier, quote from Juliet
“All plots tend to move deathward. This is the nature of plots. ”
― Don DeLillo, quote from White Noise
“The body's pain is so paper-thin and insignificant compared to that of the mind.”
― Peter Høeg, quote from Smilla's Sense of Snow
“I should say upfront that I have never been in a cellar in my life. In fact, I can see no reason why anyone should ever go into a cellar unless there is wine involved.”
― Rachel Hawkins, quote from Hex Hall
“Sorry,” Kiersten says to Lake and I. “Mom says the FCC is responsible for inventing cusswords just for media shock value. She says if everyone would just use them enough, they wouldn’t be considered cusswords anymore and no one would ever be offended by them”
This kid is hard to keep up with!
“Your mother encourages you to cuss?” Gavin says.
Kiersten nods. “I don’t see it that way. It’s more like she’s encouraging us to undermine a system flawed through overuse of words that are made out to be harmful, when in fact they’re just letters, mixed together like every other word. That’s all they are, mixed up letters. Like, take the word “butterfly” for example. What if someone decided one day that butterfly is a cussword? People would eventually start using butterfly as an insult, and to emphasize things in a negative way. The actual WORD doesn’t mean anything. It’s the negative association people give these words that make them cusswords. So if we all just decided to keep saying butterfly all the time, eventually people would stop caring. The shock value would subside…and it would just become another word again. Same with every other so-called bad word. If we would all just start saying them all the time, They wouldn’t be bad anymore. That’s what my mom says anyway.”
“Kiersten?” Eddie says. “Will you be my new best friend?”
Lake grabs a french fry off her plate and throws it at Eddie, hitting her in the face with it. “That’s Bullshit,” Lake says.
“Oh, go BUTTERFLY yourself,” Eddie says. She returns a fry in Lakes direction.”
― Colleen Hoover, quote from Point of Retreat
“Do you question my authority? I am the headmistress of Evernight!" It was Balthazar who answered her by casually slinging his crossbow back upon his shoulder so that it just happened to be aimed straight at Mrs. Bethany. He wasn't threatening her, exactly, but it was very clear that he wasn't going to back down. As she jerked upright in shock, Balthazar drawled, "School's out.”
― Claudia Gray, quote from Evernight
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.