Quotes from Libra

“Some nights I need to be held. Tonight I'm a listener. So nice to lie in rumpled sheets and listen. Cover me with words.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“That which we fear to touch is often the very fabric of our salvation. ”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“There's always more to it. This is what history consists of. It is the sum total of the things they aren't telling us.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“The less important you are in an office, the more they expect the happy smile.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“The truth of the world is exhausting.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“There is a world inside the world.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“A fact is innocent until someone wants it; then it become intelligence.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“Maybe what has to happen is that the individual must allow himself to be swept along, must find himself in the stream of no-choice, the single direction. This is what makes things inevitable. You use the restrictions and penalties they invent to make yourself stronger. History means to merge. The purpose of history is to climb out of your own skin. (101)”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“Something about the time of year depressed him deeply. Overcast skies and cutting wind, leaves falling, dusk falling, dark too soon, night flying down before you are ready. It's a terror. It's a bareness of the soul. He hears the rustle of nuns. Here comes winter in the bone. We've set it loose on the land. There must be some song or poem, some folk magic we can use to ease this fear. Skelly Bone Pete. Here it is in the landscape and sky. We've set it loose. We've opened up the ground and here it is. He took Interstate 45 south. He didn't want them to kill Leon. He felt a saturating sense of death, a dread in the soft filling of his bones, the suckable part, approaching Galveston now.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“A shrewd person would one day start a religion based on coincidence, if he hasn't already, and make a million.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“Think of two parallel lines. […] One is the life of Lee H. Oswald. One is the conspiracy to kill the President. What bridges the space between them? What makes a connection inevitable? There is a third line. It comes out of dreams, visions, intuitions, prayers, out of the deepest levels of the self. It's not generated by cause and effect like the other two lines. It's a line that cuts across causality, cuts across time. It has no history that we can recognize or understand. But it forces a connection. It puts a man on the path of his destiny. - David Ferrie (339)”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“That clean but lonely feeling when there are no other cars. The traffic lights changing just for you.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“It was uncanny. You press a button and a man drops dead a hundred meters away. It seemed hollow and remote, falsifying everything. It was a trick of the lenses. The man is an accurate picture. Then he is upside down. Then he is right side up. You shoot at a series of images conveyed to you through a metal tube. The force of a death should be enormous but how can you know what kind of man you’ve killed or who was the braver and stronger if you have to peer through layers of glass that deliver the image but obscure the meaning of the act? War has a conscience or it’s ordinary murder.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“There is enough mystery in the facts as we know them, enough of conspiracy, coincidence, loose ends, dead ends, multiple interpretations. There is no need […] to invent the grand and masterful scheme, the plot that reaches flawlessly in a dozen directions. - Agent Branch (58)”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“[Lee Oswald] saw himself as part of something vast and sweeping. He was the product of a sweeping history, he and his mother, locked into a process, a system of money and property that diminished their human worth every day, as if by scientific law. The books made him part of something. Something led up to his presence in this room, in this particular skin, and something would follow. Men in small rooms. Men reading and waiting, struggling with secret and feverish ideas. (41)”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“If the world is where we hide from ourselves, what do we do when the world is no longer accessible? We invent a false name, invent a destiny, purchase a firearm through the mail. (148)”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“Secrets are an exalted state, almost a dream state. They're a way of arresting motion, stopping the world so we can see ourselves in it.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“God made big people. And God made little people. But Colt made the .45 to even things up.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“He was a regulator first-class, which was another term for metalworker unskilled.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“When Lee has a certain look on his face, eyes kind of amused, mouth small and tight, he finds himself thinking of his father. He believes it is a look his father may have used. It feels like his father. A curious sensation, the look coming upon him, taking hold in an unmistakable way, and then his old man is here, eerie and forceful and whole, a meeting across worlds.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“Even as he printed the words, he imagined people reading them, people moved by his loneliness and disappointment, even by his wretched spelling, the childish mesh of his composition. Let them see the struggle and humiliation, the effort he had to exert to write a simple sentence. The pages were crowded, smudged, urgent, a true picture of his state of mind, of his rage and frustration, knowing a thing but not being able to record it properly.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“A word is also a picture of a word.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“The falling away of things we carry around with us, twilight and chimney smoke.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“Is he one of them now? Frustrated, stuck, self-watching, looking for a means of connection, a way to break out. After Oswald, men in America are no longer required to lead lives of quiet desperation. You apply for a credit card, buy a handgun, travel through cities, suburbs and shopping malls, anonymous, anonymous, looking for a chance to take a shot at the first puffy empty famous face, just to let people know there is someone out there who reads the papers.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“L'azione è verità, e la verità vacilla quando la guerra finisce e gli abitanti del villaggio sono liberi di tornare ai loro campi. Sopravviviamo, e siamo nuovamente sconfitti.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“Some people don't believe in God but they color eggs at Easter just to change the pattern of their days.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“Always the pain, the chaos of composition. He could not find order in the field of little symbols. They were in the hazy distance. He could not clearly see the picture that is called a word. A word is also a picture of a word. He saw spaces, incomplete features, and tried to guess at the rest.
He made wild tries at phonetic spelling. But the language tricked him with its inconsistencies. He watched sentences deteriorate, powerless to make them right. The nature of things was to be elusive. Things slipped through his perceptions. He could not get a grip on the runaway world.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“Tutto dovrebbe essere qualcosa. Ma non lo è mai. È la natura dell'esistenza.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

“The Agency was the one subject in his life that could never be exhausted. Central Intelligence. Beryl saw it as the best organized church in the Christian world, a mission to collect and store everything that everyone has ever said and then reduce it to a microdot and call it God.”
― Don DeLillo, quote from Libra

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Popular quotes

“He imagined a town called A. Around the communal fire they’re shaping arrowheads and carving tributes o the god of the hunt. One day some guys with spears come over the ridge, perform all kinds of meanness, take over, and the new guys rename the town B. Whereupon they hang around the communal fire sharpening arrowheads and carving tributes to the god of the hunt. Some climatic tragedy occurs — not carving the correct tributary figurines probably — and the people of B move farther south, where word is there’s good fishing, at least according to those who wander to B just before being cooked for dinner. Another tribe of unlucky souls stops for the night in the emptied village, looks around at the natural defenses provided by the landscape, and decides to stay awhile. It’s a while lot better than their last digs — what with the lack of roving tigers and such — plus it comes with all the original fixtures. they call the place C, after their elder, who has learned that pretending to talk to spirits is a fun gag that gets you stuff. Time passes. More invasions, more recaptures, D, E, F, and G. H stands as it is for a while. That ridge provides some protection from the spring floods, and if you keep a sentry up there you can see the enemy coming for miles. Who wouldn’t want to park themselves in that real estate? The citizens of H leave behind cool totems eventually toppled by the people of I, whose lack of aesthetic sense if made up for by military acumen. J, K, L, adventures in thatched roofing, some guys with funny religions from the eastern plains, long-haired freaks from colder climes, the town is burned to the ground and rebuilt by still more fugitives. This is the march of history. And conquest and false hope. M falls to plague, N to natural disaster — same climatic tragedy as before, apparently it’s cyclical. Mineral wealth makes it happen for the O people, and the P people are renowned for their basket weaving. No one ever — ever — mentions Q. The dictator names the city after himself; his name starts with the letter R. When the socialists come to power they spend a lot of time painting over his face, which is everywhere. They don’t last. Nobody lasts because there’s always somebody else. They all thought they owned it because they named it and that was their undoing. They should have kept the place nameless. They should have been glad for their good fortune, and left it at that. X, Y, Z.”
― Colson Whitehead, quote from Apex Hides the Hurt

“When they shall paint our sockets gray
And light us like a stinking fuse,
Remember that we once could say,
Yesterday we had a world to lose.”
― Stanley Kunitz, quote from The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz

“Dr. Harold Shipman, the victims were men and women, some in hospitals, some living at home, who were part of his patient roster.5 He murdered several hundred patients (the exact number will never be known)-mostly with opiates.”
― quote from The Anatomy of Evil

“Well, it all started when I figured out that the janitor at my high school was the Angel of Death…”
― Matt Ruff, quote from Bad Monkeys

“Good dog! Nice fetch!"
"He wasn't fetching."
"Bring her here, boy. Good job!"
The dog looked from Zack to me.
"I've been training him," Zack said. "Up till now he's brought home only dead rabbits, but I guess he's finally getting the hang of it.”
― Elizabeth Chandler, quote from The Back Door of Midnight

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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.