“Things don't just happen, they have reasons. And the reasons have reasons. And the reasons for the reasons have reasons. And then the things that happen make other things happen, so they become reasons themselves. Nothing moves forward in a straight line, nothing is straightforward.”
― Kevin Brooks, quote from Martyn Pig
“It's strange, the lack of emotion, the absence of drama in reality. When things happen in real life, extraordinary things, there's no music, there's no dah-dah-daaahhs. There's no close-ups. No dramatic camera angles. Nothing happens. Nothing stops, the rest of the world goes on.”
― Kevin Brooks, quote from Martyn Pig
“You reach a certain age when reality grabs you by the scruff of the neck and shouts in your face:"Hey, look, this is what life is." And you have to open your eyes and look at it, listen to it, smell it: people who don't like you, things you don't want to do, things that hurt, things that scare you, questions without answers, feelings you don't understand, feelings you don't want but have no control over.
Reality.
When you gradually come to realise that all that stuff in books, films, television, magazines, newspapers, comics - it's all rubbish. It's got nothing to do with anything. It's all made up. It doesn't happen like that. It's not real. It means nothing. Reality is what you see when you look out of the window of a bus: dour faces, sad and temporary lives, millions of cars, metal, bricks, glass, rain, cruel laughter, ugliness, dirt, bad teeth, crippled pigeons, little kids in pushchairs who've already forgotten how to smile ...”
― Kevin Brooks, quote from Martyn Pig
“Alcohol. It sucks the life out of a face and replaces it with its own dumb shine of inanity. It’s up to you. If you want to lose yourself, have a drink.”
― Kevin Brooks, quote from Martyn Pig
“It’s strange, the lack of emotion, the absence of drama in reality. When things happen in real life, extraordinary things, there’s no music…There’s no close-ups. No dramatic camera angles. Nothing happens. Nothing stops, the rest of the world goes on.”
― Kevin Brooks, quote from Martyn Pig
“But now, when he smiles at you, his eyes smile too”
― Tillie Cole, quote from Heart Recaptured
“Snowden was alert to the possibility that foreign intelligence services would seek his files, and was determined to prevent this. As a spy, one of his jobs had been to defend American secrets from Chinese attack. He knew the capabilities of America’s foes. Snowden made clear repeatedly that he didn’t want to damage US intelligence operations abroad. ‘I had access to full rosters of anybody working at the NSA. The entire intelligence community and undercover assets around the world. The locations of every station we have, all of their missions … If I just wanted to damage the US I could have shut down the surveillance system in an afternoon. That was never my intention,’ he said. He”
― Luke Harding, quote from The Snowden Files: The Inside Story of the World's Most Wanted Man
“See, you have to marry me. I seem to scare off all the help.”
― Lynsay Sands, quote from Single White Vampire
“A leaf turns in the wind, and you suddenly have a different perception of what colour it is.”
― Robin Hobb, quote from Forest Mage
“My clever baton holds your unnatural sorcery in abeyance.”
― Jack Vance, quote from The Dying Earth
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.