Quotes from Liar & Spy

“Life is a million different dots making one gigantic picture. And maybe the big picture is nice, maybe it's amazing, but if you're standing with your face pressed up against a bunch of black dots, it's really hard to tell.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy

“Boredom is what happens to people who have no control over their minds.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy

“Mom. She always says to look at the big picture. How all of the little things don't matter in the long run. . . I know that Mom is right about the big picture. But Dad is right too: Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other. The dots matter.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy

“Mom's always telling me to smile and hoping I'll turn into a smiley person, which, to be honest, is kind of annoying.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy

“If you took every tear cried by everyone on earth on one single day and put them in a container, how big would that container need to be? Could you fill a water tower? Three water towers? It's one of those unknowable things. There has to be an answer, but we'll never know what it is.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy

“...if you smile for no reason at all you will actually start to feel happy”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy

“Blue Team! It's what's for breakfast!”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy

“Dad is looking at the bookshelves, deep in thought, deciding which book should go where. Once, Mom came home from work and discovered that he had turned all the books around so that the bindings were against the wall and the pages faced out. He said it was calming not to have all those words floating around and "creating static." Mom made him turn them back. She said it was too hard to find a book when she couldn't read the titles. Then she poured herself a big glass of wine.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy

“Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy

“Look, I know Mom talks about the big picture. She wants you to remember that you'll find new friends, that life is always changing, sometimes in really good ways. But life is also what's happening NOW, Georges. What Dallas and Carter are doing is happening NOW, and you can't just wait for it to be over. We have to do something about it. Now.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy

“While the rest of the class is hanging on every syllable that comes out of Mr. Landau's mouth, I'm looking at the false tongue poster and I'm kind of wishing it wasn't wrong. There's something nice about those thick black arrows: sour here, salty there, like there's a right place for everything. Instead of the total confusion the human tongue actually turns out to be.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy

“Look, I know Mom talks about the big picture. She wants you to remember that you'll find new friends, that life is always changing, sometimes in really good ways. But life is also what's happening now, Georges.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy

“It's weird, because I know Mom is right about the big picture. But Dad is right too: Life is really just a bunch of nows, one after the other.

The dots matter.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy

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About BookQuoters

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.