“What about the future?"
"We'll talk about the future when it gets here.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from La reina del sur
“Los libros son puertas que te llevan a la calle, decía Patricia. Con ellos aprendes, te educas, viajas, sueñas, imaginas, vives otras vidas y multiplicas la tuya por mil.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from La reina del sur
“No fear is unbearable, she concluded, unless you've got time on your hands and a healthy imagination.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from La reina del sur
“-Nos hacemos fotos, no con el objeto de recordar, sino para completarlas después con el resto de nuestras vidas. Por eso hay fotos que aciertan y fotos que no. Imágenes que el tiempo pone en su lugar, atribuyendo a unas su auténtico significado, y negando otras que se apagan solas, igual que si los colores se borraran con el tiempo.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from La reina del sur
“She had discovered with surprise and pleasure that as she turned each page, the book was written, as if for the first time, all over again.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from La reina del sur
“Os livros são portas que te levam para a rua (...). Com eles aprendes, educas-te, viajas, sonhas, imaginas, vives outras vidas e multiplicas a tua por mil. Quem te oferece mais por menos (...)? E também servem para manter à distância muitas coisas negativas (...) Às vezes interrogo-me como conseguem superar as coisas, aquelas [pessoas] que não lêem.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from La reina del sur
“Había aprendido que lo malo no era la espera, sino las cosas que imaginas mientras esperas”.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from La reina del sur
“I ask myself how other people see me, and I hope they see me from way far away.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from La reina del sur
“The sea was cruel and selfish as human beings, and in its monstrous simplicity had no notion of complexities like pity, wounding, or remorse... You could see yourself in it... while the wind, the light, the swaying, the sound of the water on the hull worked the miracle of distancing, calming you until you didn't hurt anymore, erasing any pity, any wound, and any remorse.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from La reina del sur
“E agora tinha a certeza de uma coisa vislumbrada ao princípio (...) que não há dois livros iguais porque nunca houve dois leitores iguais. E que cada livro lido é, como cada ser humano, um livro singular, uma história única e um mundo à parte.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from La reina del sur
“And then it struck her that life was sometimes so beautiful that it didn't seem like life at all.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from La reina del sur
“Dantés: que no hay dos libros iguales porque nunca hubo dos lectores iguales. Y que cada libro leído es, como cada ser humano, un libro singular, una historia única y un mundo aparte.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from La reina del sur
“You make a pact with life and death: so many years as a king, and then...Say what you will, dirty money spends as green as clean.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from La reina del sur
“Fucking incredible! Four miles in five minutes, with a slight maneuver to avoid an oil barge anchored halfway in. And when the HJ peeled away and abandoned the pursuit and the helicopter began to fall back and gain altitude, Teresa stood up in the middle of the speedboat and, still illuminated by the spotlight, lifted a triumphant single finger. Adiós Cabróooon.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from La reina del sur
“El teléfono estaba sobre la colcha, pequeño, negro y siniestro. Lo miró sin tocarlo. Bip-bip. Aterrada. Bip-bip. Su zumbido iba mezclándose con las palabras de la canción, como si formase parte de ella. Porque los contrabandistas, seguían diciendo los Tigres, ésos no perdonan nada. El Güero había usado las mismas palabras, riendo como solía hacerlo, mientras le acariciaba la nuca y le tiraba el teléfono encima de la falda. Si alguna vez suena, es que me habré muerto. Entonces, corre. Cuanto puedas, prietita. Corre y no pares, porque ya no estaré allí para ayudarte. Y si llegas viva a donde sea, échate un tequila en mi memoria. Por los buenos ratos, mi chula. Por los buenos ratos.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from La reina del sur
“El peor mal del ser humano fue inventar la palabra. Mira si no los perros. Así de leales son porque no hablan.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from La reina del sur
“transportaban en un solo viaje de ocho a doce toneladas con la complicidad de la policía, el ministerio de Defensa y la propia presidencia del Gobierno mejicano. Eran los tiempos felices de Carlos Salinas de Gortari, con los narcos traficando a la sombra de Los Pinos;”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from La reina del sur
“He was mine, and I was his. If I knew anything at all, it was that only those two things mattered.”
― Jamie McGuire, quote from A Beautiful Wedding
“For it is in the millions of small melodies that the truth of history is always found, for history only matters because of the effects we see or imagine in the lives of the ordinary people who are caught up in, or give shape to, the great events.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Shadow of the Hegemon
“Just because we've been dealt a certain hand doesn't mean we can't choose to rise above - to conquer the boundaries of destiny that none of us wanted.”
― Stephenie Meyer, quote from The Twilight Saga
“The only gain of civilisation for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations--and absolutely nothing more. And through the development of this many-sidedness man may come to finding enjoyment in bloodshed. In fact, this has already happened to him. Have you noticed that it is the most civilised gentlemen who have been the subtlest slaughterers, to whom the Attilas and Stenka Razins could not hold a candle, and if they are not so conspicuous as the Attilas and Stenka Razins it is simply because they are so often met with, are so ordinary and have become so familiar to us. In any case civilisation has made mankind if not more bloodthirsty, at least more vilely, more loathsomely bloodthirsty. In old days he saw justice in bloodshed and with his conscience at peace exterminated those he thought proper. Now we do think bloodshed abominable and yet we engage in this abomination, and with more energy than ever. Which is worse? Decide that for yourselves. They say that Cleopatra (excuse an instance from Roman history) was fond of sticking gold pins into her slave-girls' breasts and derived gratification from their screams and writhings. You will say that that was in the comparatively barbarous times; that these are barbarous times too, because also, comparatively speaking, pins are stuck in even now; that though man has now learned to see more clearly than in barbarous ages, he is still far from having learnt to act as reason and science would dictate. But yet you are fully convinced that he will be sure to learn when he gets rid of certain old bad habits, and when common sense and science have completely re-educated human nature and turned it in a normal direction. You are confident that then man will cease from INTENTIONAL error and will, so to say, be compelled not to want to set his will against his normal interests. That is not all; then, you say, science itself will teach man (though to my mind it's a superfluous luxury) that he never has really had any caprice or will of his own, and that he himself is something of the nature of a piano-key or the stop of an organ, and that there are, besides, things called the laws of nature; so that everything he does is not done by his willing it, but is done of itself, by the laws of nature. Consequently we have only to discover these laws of nature, and man will no longer have to answer for his actions and life will become exceedingly easy for him. All human actions will then, of course, be tabulated according to these laws, mathematically, like tables of logarithms up to 108,000, and entered in an index; or, better still, there would be published certain edifying works of the nature of encyclopaedic lexicons, in which everything will be so clearly calculated and explained that there will be no more incidents or adventures in the world.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from Notes from Underground
“Life is a dream, and everyone wakes eventually.”
― Robert Jordan, quote from Crossroads of Twilight
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.