“That's what innocence is, you know. A blissful oblivion of what's coming, of what you'll lose and what you'll gain, and what kind of person you'll grow up to be.”
― Laura Wiess, quote from Leftovers
“Time is not your friend. It doesn't care if you live fast or die slow, if you are or if you aren't. It was here before you arrived and it will go on after you leave. Time doesn't care who wins or who loses, if your life span is full or empty, honorable or shameful. Time is indifferent. It simply doesn't give a shit.”
― Laura Wiess, quote from Leftovers
“See, guys freak out. They hit critical mass and blast nuclear, white-hot anger out over the world like walking flamethrowers. But girls freak in. They absorb the pain and bitterness and keep right on sponging it up until they drown.”
― Laura Wiess, quote from Leftovers
“Ignorance of the outcome doesn't exempt you from the consequences.”
― Laura Wiess, quote from Leftovers
“It's just that instead of erupting and annihilating our tormentors, we destroy ourselves instead.”
― Laura Wiess, quote from Leftovers
“We mutinied quietly, using every lesson we’d been taught by every person who’d ever used us for their own benefit.”
― Laura Wiess, quote from Leftovers
“Yeah, I know I've changed. Nothing gets to me anymore.
Well, okay, except for stuff in the past. Back then I was all innocent and trusting and didn't know anything. Now I know plenty and you can't fucking touch me.”
― Laura Wiess, quote from Leftovers
“We're not afraid of the dark. Our nightmares were born on sultry, summer afternoons.”
― Laura Wiess, quote from Leftovers
“Maybe it's true that shared trauma brings people closer together-a common hardship, a battle to survive-because when times are quiet people relax and go their own separate ways. They're lulled into believing they've got everything under control and don't need what they did before.”
― Laura Wiess, quote from Leftovers
“No step is a safe one, so it's safer to take none at all.”
― Laura Wiess, quote from Leftovers
“I tore the crusts off my grilled cheese sandwich and set them aside to throw out for the birds. Their motives were pure -- hunger, thirst, shelter -- and they didn't mind leftovers.”
― Laura Wiess, quote from Leftovers
“You told us once not to be in such a hurry to grow up, but I don't see any way we could have avoided it. There was always someone out there ready to carve away another chunk of our innocence. Maybe because theirs was already gone and they couldn't stand the sight of our ignorant happiness. Because that's what innocence is, you know. A blissful oblivion of what's coming, of what you'll lose and what you'll gain, and what kind of person you'll grow up to be.”
― Laura Wiess, quote from Leftovers
“Being user friendly doesn't mean you're going to be loved.”
― Laura Wiess, quote from Leftovers
“... real life isn't like the movies. The victim doesn't usually win. She just endures.”
― Laura Wiess, quote from Leftovers
“So sometimes what takes you down can be used to raise you up again.”
― Laura Wiess, quote from Leftovers
Laura Wiess
Born place: The United States
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“ingenue whose career was winding down”
― David Halberstam, quote from The Fifties
“Working on a typewriter by touch, like riding a bicycle or strolling on a path, is best done by not giving it a glancing thought. Once you do, your fingers fumble and hit the wrong keys. To do things involving practiced skills, you need to turn loose the systems of muscles and nerves responsible for each maneuver, place them on their own, and stay out of it. There is no real loss of authority in this, since you get to decide whether to do the thing or not, and you can intervene and embellish the technique any time you like; if you want to ride a bicycle backward, or walk with an eccentric loping gait giving a little skip every fourth step, whistling at the same time, you can do that. But if you concentrate your attention on the details, keeping in touch with each muscle, thrusting yourself into a free fall with each step and catching yourself at the last moment by sticking out the other foot in time to break the fall, you will end up immobilized, vibrating with fatigue.
It is a blessing to have options for choice and change in the learning of such unconsciously coordinated acts. If we were born with all these knacks inbuilt, automated like ants, we would surely miss the variety. It would be a less interesting world if we all walked and skipped alike, and never fell from bicycles. If we were all genetically programmed to play the piano deftly from birth, we might never learn to understand music.”
― Lewis Thomas, quote from The Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher
“Markets do not automatically generate trust, cooperation or collective action for the common good. Quite the contrary: it is in the nature of economic competition that a participant who breaks the rules will triumph—at least in the short run—over more ethically sensitive competitors.”
― Tony Judt, quote from Ill Fares the Land
“The critical question for our generation—and for every generation—
is this: If you could have heaven, with no sickness, and with all the
friends you ever had on earth, and all the food you ever liked, and
all the leisure activities you ever enjoyed, and all the natural beauties
you ever saw, all the physical pleasures you ever tasted, and no
human conflict or any natural disasters, could you be satisfied with
heaven, if Christ were not there? ”
― John Piper, quote from God Is the Gospel: Meditations on God's Love as the Gift of Himself
“You collect art: you must know that the miniature artists, at the end of careers spent painting the tiniest, most exacting details that no one would ever look at, would often put their eyes out with needles. Too much beauty, yes, but also too much seeing. They were tired of seeing. The dark was safe and warm and comfortable. Blindness was a gift. I still have seeing to do.”
― Ian McDonald, quote from The Dervish House
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Death's MistressBookQuoters 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 2018, 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.
