“For me love is like this: you're in one room or apartment which you think is fine, then you walk through a door and close it behind you and find yourself in the next apartment, which is even better, larger, more floorspace, a better view. You're happy there and then you go into the next apartment and close the door and this one is even better. And the sequence continues, but with the odd feature that although this has happened to you a number of times, you forget: each time your new quarters are manifestly better and each time it's breathtaking, a surprise, something you've done nothing to deserve or make happen. You never intend to go from one room onward to the next—it just happens. You notice a door, you go through, and you're delighted again.”
― Norman Rush, quote from Mating
“One thing you distinctly never want to hear a man you're interested in say softly is that his favorite book in the whole world is The Golden Notebook. Here you are dealing with a liar from the black lagoon and it's time to start feeling in your purse for carfare.”
― Norman Rush, quote from Mating
“Very goodlooking people are as a rule more forgetful than the median. Their mothers start it and the world at large continues it, handing them things, picking things up for them, smoothing their vicinity out for them in every way. I on the other hand remember everything.”
― Norman Rush, quote from Mating
“In love and mating, ambience is central.”
― Norman Rush, quote from Mating
“This shooting star had apparently been sedentarized in my bailiwick-so, good.”
― Norman Rush, quote from Mating
“What a datum! I couldn't help thinking over and over.”
― Norman Rush, quote from Mating
“This might be good, I thought as I studied the crowd. There were several definitely intelligent guys present, not strobe-light intellects but people who could make you uncomfortable in a debate if you got too much beyond what you absolutely had the facts on.”
― Norman Rush, quote from Mating
“A utopia I would join in a minute is a society which could be communist or capitalist, anything, except that no woman member of it ever underwent sex unless she was hot. Pretending to be hot bears a distinct resemblance to self-rape, but it’s a rape accompanied by boredom instead of fear.”
― Norman Rush, quote from Mating
“I say, drop all your defenses. Anyone can make a mistake — even you. Do not defend your mistakes; just accept them and move on. When you are totally defenseless, that is when you will be completely strong.”
― Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, quote from Celebrating Silence: Excerpts from Five Years of Weekly Knowledge 1995-2000
“You realise that people actually have to live in among all this and that east London is the bill, the tab that these cunts are picking up so that you can live in west London.”
― John Niven, quote from Kill Your Friends
“We had come so close to greatness. We had smelled it, and it smelled like roast pig. Everybody likes the smell of roast pig. But what is worse, smelling the roast and not feasting, or not smelling the roast at all?”
― Garth Stein, quote from Racing in the Rain: My Life as a Dog
“Anybody that's capable of love can't be all bad.”
― Steven dos Santos, quote from The Culling
“There are people who will offer you many things and demand nothing in return. Fear them the most, for they are the ones who will take the things that are most precious to you and then their demands will come at a time when it is most inconvenient to you.”
― Anand Neelakantan, quote from Ajaya: Roll of the Dice
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.