Quotes from Memory of Water

“Silence is not empty or immaterial, and it is not needed to chain tame things. It often guards powers strong enough to shatter everything.”
― Emmi Itäranta, quote from Memory of Water

“But water doesn't care for human sorrows. It flows without slowing or quickening its pace in the darkness of the earth, where only stones will hear.”
― Emmi Itäranta, quote from Memory of Water

“The world will not spin slower or faster when we have passed through the gate together. What remains is light on water, or a shifting shadow.”
― Emmi Itäranta, quote from Memory of Water

“The story tells that water has a consciousness, that it carries in its memory everything that’s ever happened in this world, from the time before humans until this moment, which draws itself in its memory even as it passes.”
― Emmi Itäranta, quote from Memory of Water

“We are children of water, and water is death’s close companion. The two cannot be separated from us, for we are made of the versatility of water and the closeness of death. They go together always, in the world and in us, and the time will come when our water runs dry.”
― Emmi Itäranta, quote from Memory of Water

“Secrets carve us like water carves stone. On the surface nothing will shift, but things we cannot tell anyone chafe and consume us, and slowly our life settles around them, moulds itself into their shape.

Secrets gnaw at the bonds between people. Sometimes we believe they can also build them: if we let another person into the silent space a secret has made within us, we are no longer alone there.”
― Emmi Itäranta, quote from Memory of Water

“I have tried not to think about them, but their past-world bleeds into our present-world, into its sky, into its dust. Did the present-world, the world that is, ever bleed into theirs, the world that was? I imagine one of them standing by the river that is now a dry scar in our landscape, a woman who is not young or old, or perhaps a man, it doesn’t matter. Her hair is pale brown and she is looking into the water that rushes by, muddy perhaps, perhaps clear, and something that has not yet been is bleeding into her thoughts.

I would like to think she turns around and goes home and does one thing differently that day because of what she has imagined, and again the day after, and the day after that.

Yet I see another her, who turns away and doesn’t do anything differently, and I can’t tell which one of them is real and which one is a reflection in clear, still water, almost sharp enough to be mistaken for real.

I look at the sky and I look at the light and I look at the shape of the earth, all the same as theirs, and yet not, and the bleeding never stops.”
― Emmi Itäranta, quote from Memory of Water

“Of all silences I had encountered this was the gravest and most inevitable: not the silence of secrets, but of knowing.”
― Emmi Itäranta, quote from Memory of Water

“Some things shouldn't be seen. Some things don't need to be said.”
― Emmi Itäranta, quote from Memory of Water

“It's not worth thinking about them, Noria. They didn't think about us, either.”
― Emmi Itäranta, quote from Memory of Water

“I would like to think she turns around and goes home and does one thing differently that day because of what she has imagined, and again the day after that, and the day after that.”
― Emmi Itäranta, quote from Memory of Water

“The ceremony is over when there is no more water.”
― Emmi Itäranta, quote from Memory of Water

“A circle only knows its own shape. If you ask where it begins and where it ends, it will stay silent, yet unbroken.”
― Emmi Itäranta, quote from Memory of Water

“I looked back towards the city, at the dusty plain and the narrow thread of the sea on the horizon, radiant in the late-afternoon sun like the scale coat of a giant dragon disappearing slowly from sight.”
― Emmi Itäranta, quote from Memory of Water

“It’s not them I think about,’ Sanja said. ‘Only their machines, what they knew and what they left to us.’ She stopped and placed her hand on my arm. I could feel the warm outline of her fingers through the fabric of my sleeve and the burn of the sun around it, two different kinds of heat next to each other. ‘It’s not worth thinking about them, Noria. They didn’t think about us, either.”
― Emmi Itäranta, quote from Memory of Water

“the silent space around a secret is shattered, it cannot be made whole again. The”
― Emmi Itäranta, quote from Memory of Water

“When the Ocean-Dragons roam, it means the world is changing,’ I said.”
― Emmi Itäranta, quote from Memory of Water

“Suurin osa maasta jalkojemme alla kasvoi ja hengitti kerran, ja kerran sillä oli elävien muoto, kauan sitten. Jonain päivänä joku, joka ei muista meitä, kävelee ihomme ja lihamme ja luidemme yli, yli tomun joka meistä jää.”
― Emmi Itäranta, quote from Memory of Water

About the author

Popular quotes

“Angel, Michael’s still waiting for you to come home.” Her face went deathly white. “It’s been over three years. He can’t still be waiting.” “He is.”
― Francine Rivers, quote from Redeeming Love

“A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only
There is shadow under this red rock,
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from The Waste Land

“It is only a novel... or, in short, only some work in which the greatest powers of the mind are displayed, in which the most thorough knowledge of human nature, the happiest delineation of its varieties, the liveliest effusions of wit and humour, are conveyed to the world in the best-chosen language”
― Jane Austen, quote from Northanger Abbey

“For now, the tension was subtle, a vibration, like the inaudible cry of overstressed steel.”
― Erik Larson, quote from The Devil in the White City: Murder, Magic, and Madness at the Fair That Changed America

“He did not know, and perhaps this doctor did. And he could not take the chance of pitting his certain ignorance against this man's possible knowledge. He was trapped as his people were always trapped, and would be until, as he had said, they could be sure that the things in the books ere really in the books.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Pearl

Interesting books

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.