Quotes from Kraken

“Any moment called now is always full of possibles.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“We should have just killed him, that's a lesson, don't get creative with revenge”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“Someone came in all Starfleet badges today. Not on my shift, sadly.'

'Fascist,' Leon had said. 'Why are you so prejudiced against nerds?'

'Please,' Billy said. 'That would be a bit self-hating, wouldn't it?'

'Yeah, but you pass. You're like, you're in deep cover,' Leon said. 'You can sneak out of the nerd ghetto and hide the badge and bring back food and clothes and word of the outside world.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“Subby Subby Subby," whispered Goss. "Keep those little bells on your slippers as quiet as you can. Sparklehorse and Starpink have managed to creep out of Apple Palace past all the monkeyfish, but if we're silent as tiny goblins we can surprise them and then all frolic off together in the Meadow of Happy Kites.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“We cannot see the universe. We are in the darkness of a trench, a deep cut, dark water heavier than earth, presences lit by our own blood, little biolumes, heroic and pathetic Promethei too afraid or weak to steal fire but able still to love. Gods are among us and they care nothing and are nothing like us.

This is how we are brave: we worship them anyway.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“He knows religion is bollocks," Collingswood said. "He just wishes he didn't.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“Just thugs only ever got so far. The best thugs were all psychologists.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“The light was going: some cloud cover arriving, as if summoned by drama.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“Virgina Woolf versus Edward Lear."

"Christ Alive," said Billy. "Are those my only choices?"

"I went for Lear," said Leon. "Partly out of fidelity to the letter L. Partly because given the choice between nonsense and boojy wittering you blatantly have to choose nonsense.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“As he got older, Billy suspected, he would, Dicaprio-like, simply become like an increasingly wizened child.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“Dane discarded his speargun with visible relief. As a paladin of the Church of God Kraken, he had few options. Like many groups devoid of real power and realpolitik, the church was actually constrained by its aesthetics. Its operatives could not have guns, simply, because guns were not squiddy enough.
It was a common moan. Drunk new soldiers of the Cathedral of the Bees might whine: “It’s not that I don’t think sting-tipped blowpipes aren’t cool, it’s just…” “I’ve gotten rally good with the steam-cudgel,” a disaffected Pistonpunk might ask her elders “but wouldn’t it be useful to…?” Oh for a carbine, devout assassins pined.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“You got to be worried when they're agreeing about anything," she said. "Prophets. That's the last bloody thing you want prophets to do.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“Fortune-telling was quantum betting, a competitive scrying of variably likely outcomes.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“Dark came early and stayed full of lights and the shouts of children.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“But this was not quite the right kraken apocalypse.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“Just her, three men, a fidgety pig and lawful intent.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“Of all the skills necessary for her work, what she was perhaps worst at was being polite to inanimate things.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“When he had first started at the center, he had liked to think that he was unexpectedly cool-looking for such a job. Now he knew that he surprised no one, that no one expected scientists to look like scientists anymore.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“How do you...? What is it you're doing?" he said to Vardy as the man took a breath, mid-insight. What do you call that? Billy thought. That reconstitutitive intelligence, berserker meme-splicing, seeing in nothings first patterns, then correspondence, then causality and dissident sense.

Vardy even smiled. "Paranoid," he said. "Theology.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“A few mad exaggerations, alright, within a couple of days: swear to fucking god, they were like throwing grenades and pulling out all kinds of crazy knackery, it was out of control. Whatever. As if the story, if big enough, reflected glory on the teller.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“Some midnight-of-all or other [apocalypse] was predicted every few days or nights. Most came to nothing, leaving relevant prophets cringing with a unique embarrassment as the sum rose. It was a very particular shame, that of now ex-worshippers avoiding each other's eyes in the unexpected aftermath of 'final' acts -- crimes, admissions, debaucheries and abandon.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“And the continual non-up-turnance of so valuable a commodity as a giant squid—the thought of getting their alembics on which made the city’s alchemists whine like dogs—was provoking more and more interest from London’s repo-men and -women.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“Your job is to get villains. Right? You'll have to know what to do. If you don't know, you have to find out. If you can't find out you bloody well make it up and then you make it so.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

“It ain't that he's not interested in, like, persuasiveness, get me? He's interested in it. Like something in a jar.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken

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Popular quotes

“In our artificial civilization many young people at twenty-five are still on the threshold of activity. As one looks back then, over eight or nine years, one sees a panorama of seemingly formidable length. So many crises, so many startling surprises, so many vivid joys and harrowing humiliations and disappointments, that one feels startlingly old; one wonders if one will ever feel so old again. —Youth and Life, Randolph S. Bourne (1886–1918) Even now, when I have come”
― Megan McCafferty, quote from Perfect Fifths

“Terstan.
Who? Who would do such a thing?
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― quote from The Light of Eidon

“If I understand you right,' he says, 'you're saying that you're basically a calculating manipulative person who always says what you think will get somebody to approve of you or form some impression of you you think you want.' I told him that was maybe a little simplistic but basically accurate, and he said further that as he understood it I was saying that I felt as if I was trapped in this false way of being and unable ever to be really open and tell the truth irregardless of whether it'd make me look good in others' eyes or not. And I somewhat resignedly said yes, and that I seemed always to have had this fraudulent, calculating part of my brain firing way all the time, as if I were constantly playing chess with everybody and figuring out that if I wanted them to move a certain way I had to move in such a way as to induce them to move that way. He asked if I ever played chess, and I told him I used to in middle school but quit because I couldn't be as good as I eventually wanted to be, how frustrating it was to get just good enough to know what getting really good at it would be like but not being able to get that good, etc.”
― David Foster Wallace, quote from Oblivion

“Why do I think these particular books have been popular? Two reasons. First, I think it is because they involve no harsh, garish violence at all. They involve game playing, really. No one is burned or cut or hurt. Certainly no one is killed. Indeed the whole sadomasochistic predicament is presented as a glorified game played out in luxurious rooms and with very attractive people, and involving very attractive slaves. There are endless motifs offered for dominance and submission, for surrender and love. It’s like a theme park of dominance and submission, a place to go to enjoy the fantasy of being overpowered by a beautiful man or woman and delightfully compelled to surrender and feel keening pleasure, without the slightest serious harm. I think it’s authentic to the way many who share this kind of fantasy really feel. I think what makes it work for people is the combination of the very graphic and unsparing sexual details mixed with the elegant fairy-tale world. Unfortunately a lot of hackwork pornography is written by those who don’t share the fantasy, and they slip into hideous violence and ugliness, thinking the market wants all that, when the market never really did. Second, this is shamelessly erotic. It pulls no punches at being what it is. It’s excessive and it is erotica. Before these books, a lot of women read what were called “women’s romances” where they had to mark the few “hot pages” in the book. I said, well, look, try this. Maybe this is what you really want, and you don’t have to mark the hot pages because every page is hot. Every page is about sexual fulfillment. Every page is meant to give you pleasure. There are no boring parts. Yet it’s very “romantic.” And well, I think this worked.”
― quote from The Claiming of Sleeping Beauty

“Stop," she shrieked, "stop trying to make it easier."

"But we do not love each other. We never have..."

"You mean," she screamed, "you have never loved me.”
― quote from As a Driven Leaf

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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.