“Never tie your happiness to the tail of someone else's kite.”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me
“Sometimes it's not what we hold on to that shapes our lives--it's what we're willing to let go of.”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me
“Maybe that's what love does - smooths the hard edges of life, giving us a gentle place to land when we fall.”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me
“I thought about that old saying, how we can never go home again. But I think it's more like a piece of us stays behind when we leave -- a piece we can never reclaim, one that awaits our next visit and demands that we remember.”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me
“You can't see the whole sky from one window.”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me
“But even so, I wondered--how well do we really ever know someone?”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me
“You're wrong, Mama. The world's beautiful, but you're so busy being disappointed in everything you don't see it!!”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me
“But I hurt everywhere, Mama. How do I make it stop?" She looked at me with a sad smile. "I don't know. Only you can figure that out. But try to remember something, Teddi: Never tie you happiness to the tail of someone else's kite.”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me
“I knew the flight into the crazy skies of love would always outweigh the uncertainty of days that didn't yet belong to me.”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me
“Never tie your happiness to the end of someone else's kite.”
― Beth Hoffman, quote from Looking for Me
“Creo que la verdad está bien en las matemáticas, en la química, en la filosofía. No en la vida. En la vida es más importante la ilusión, la imaginación, el deseo, la esperanza. Además, ¿sabemos acaso lo que es la verdad? Si yo lo digo que aquel trozo de ventana azul, digo una verdad. Pero es una verdad parcial, y por lo tanto una especie de mentira. Porque el trozo de ventana no está solo, está en una casa, en una cuidad, en un paisaje. Está rodeado del gris de ese muro de cemento, del azul claro del cielo, de aquellas nubes alargadas, de infinitas cosas más. Y si no digo todo absolutamente todo, estoy mintiendo. Pero decir todo es imposible, aun en este caso de la ventana, de un siempre trozo de la realidad física. La realidad es infinita y además infinitamente matizada, y si me olvido de un solo matiz, ya estoy mintiendo. Ahora imagínese lo que es la realidad de los seres humanos con sus complicaciones y recovecos, contradicciones y además cambiantes. Porque cambia a cada instante que pasa, y lo que éramos hace un momento no lo somos más. ¿Somos, acaso, siempre la misma persona? ¿Tenemos acaso siempre los mismos sentimientos? Se puede querer a alguien y de pronto desestimarlo y hasta detestarlo. Y si cuando lo desestimamos cometemos el error de decírselo, eso es una verdad, pero una verdad momentánea, que no será más verdad dentro de una hora o al otro día, o en otras circunstancias. Y en cambio el ser a quien se la decimos creerá que ésa es la verdad, la verdad para siempre y desde siempre. Y se hundirá en la desesperación.”
― Ernesto Sabato, quote from On Heroes and Tombs
“Dealing with depression isn't about trying to run away from the feeling; it's about learning to walk alongside it.”
― Hannah Hart, quote from Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded
“If I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slaughterhouse-five: The Children's Crusade, A Duty-dance with Death
“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
“He watches me eat for a moment. “Let me see it again.”
“No.”
“Okay.” He pulls a can of carbonated water out of his backpack and pops the lid.
Sometimes I want to punch him. I find the letter and slide it across the table.
He reads it again. It makes me feel all jittery inside.
His eyes flick up. “She likes you.”
I shrug and steal his drink. It tastes like someone drowned an orange in a bottle of Perrier, and I cough.
Rev smiles. “You like her.”
“How can you drink this crap?”
His smile widens. “Is it making you crazy that she won’t reveal herself?”
“Seriously, Rev, do you have any regular water?”
He’s no fool. “What do you want to do?”
I take a long breath and blow it out. I run a hand through my hair. “I don’t know.”
“You know.”
“I want to stake out the grave. This waiting between letters is killing me.”
“Suggest email.”
“She doesn’t want to tell me anything more than her age. She’s not going to give me her email address.”
“Maybe not her real email. But you could set up a private account and give her the address. See if she writes you.”
It’s so simple it’s brilliant. I hate that I didn’t think of it. “Rev, I could kiss you.”
“Brush your teeth first.” He reclaims his bizarre can of water.”
― Brigid Kemmerer, quote from Letters to the Lost
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.