“Every now and then I like to do as I'm told, just to confuse people.”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Melting Stones
“Yes Headwoman Azaze. But I never lie to Rosethorn. She, um, discourages it."
"Evvy and I have an understanding." She grabbed the teakettle and poured hot water into the mug. "She tells me the truth, and I don't hang her in the first well we come to. It's a solution that works tolerably well for both of us.”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Melting Stones
“I'm not so fond of people myself, Evvy, but I took my vows for a reason. There are two classes of people in the world, the destroyers and the builders. I want to build, not destroy. You need to ask yourself who you're going to be.”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Melting Stones
“The first thing every mage should learn is that magic makes fools of us. Now you may call yourself a mage. You have learned the most important lesson.”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Melting Stones
“When I told you don’t touch me to wake me, ever, because I’ve been in a war and I react violently, you respected me.” For a plant person, Rosethorn could sound like iron when she made a point with someone stupid. “Evvy was in that same war. She fought as hard as any adult—harder, sometimes. Yet you refuse to acknowledge that she may suffer the same effects.”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Melting Stones
“But I’ve only been at this mage business four years. I have some catching up to do—”
― Tamora Pierce, quote from Melting Stones
“Some people get more of a chance to show who they are. Other people never get the chance.”
― Todd Strasser, quote from Wish You Were Dead
“Some people make a bad bed, they just have to lie in it.”
― Virginia Euwer Wolff, quote from Make Lemonade
“If I longed for destruction it was merely that this eye might be extinguished. I longed for an earthquake, for some cataclysm of nature which would plunge the lighthouse into the sea. I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. (I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a change to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard - and in order to forget. I wanted something of the earth which was not of man's doing, something absolutely divorced from the human of which I was surfeited. I wanted something purely terrestrial and absolutely divested of idea. I wanted to feel the blood running back into my veins, even at the cost of annihilation. I wanted to shake the stone and the light out of my system. I wanted the dark fecundity of nature, the deep well of the womb, silence, or else the lapping of the black waters of death. I wanted to be that night which the remorseless eye illuminated, a night diapered with stars and trailing comets. To be of night, so frighteningly silent, so utterly incomprehensible and eloquent at the same time. Never more to speak or to listen or to think. To be englobed and encompassed and to encompass and to englobe at the same time. No more pity, no more tenderness. To be human only terrestrially, like a plant or a worm or a brook. To be decomposed, divested of light and stone, variable as the molecule, durable as the atom, heartless as the earth itself.”
― Henry Miller, quote from Tropic of Capricorn
“When you live alone, your furnishings, your possessions, are always confronting you with the thinness of your existence.”
― Zoë Heller, quote from What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal]
“What object is served by this circle of misery and violence and fear? It must tend to some end, or else our universe is ruled by chance, which is unthinkable. But what end? There is the great standing perennial problem to which human reason is as far from an answer as ever.”
― Arthur Conan Doyle, quote from His Last Bow
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.