“When you own nothing, it's easy to let things go.”
― Jerry Spinelli, quote from Milkweed
“Who are you?'
I didn't understand the question.
I'm Uri', he said. 'What's your name?'
I gave him my name. 'Stopthief.”
― Jerry Spinelli, quote from Milkweed
“He tapped my chest. 'Happy is here.' He tapped his own chest. 'Here.'
I looked down past my chin. 'Inside?'
'Inside.'
It was getting crowded in there. First angel. Now happy. It seemed there was more to me than cabbage and turnips.”
― Jerry Spinelli, quote from Milkweed
“Some nights, we were a city of two.”
― Jerry Spinelli, quote from Milkweed
“So," he said, "we ourselves will be the candle flames." He put his hands on his chest. "Feel your hearts, how warm they are.”
― Jerry Spinelli, quote from Milkweed
“Happy". I had not heard that word since Mr. Milgrom spoke it at the last Hanukkah. I asked him the question that had been on my mind since then. "Tata, what is happy?"
He looked at me and at the ceiling and back to me.
"Did you ever taste an orange?" he said. ”
― Jerry Spinelli, quote from Milkweed
“They don't live here. They live in Heaven.'
Where's that?'
I don't know,' I said. 'Enos says it's right here, on this side of the wall, but I never saw an angel over here. Kuba says it's in Russia. Olek says Washington America.'
What's Washington America?'
Enos says it's a place with no wall and no lice and lots of potatoes.”
― Jerry Spinelli, quote from Milkweed
“You are what you are"
"Which is what? I wondered”
― Jerry Spinelli, quote from Milkweed
“I thought of the stone angel. I pictured the snow falling over it, two classes of snow rising on the top of its wings. So silent, the both of them, the angel and the snow. I pretended I was the stone angel. I close my eyes and pretended as hard as I could, and after a while I was convinced I could feel wings sprouting from my shoulders. I wanted to look, to see my wings, but I was an angel stone, so I could not move.”
― Jerry Spinelli, quote from Milkweed
“I loved his goatee even more than his mustache. It was so soft and white. I wanted to rub my face in it. I wanted to climb inside it and live there and peek out.”
― Jerry Spinelli, quote from Milkweed
“The louder the babies screamed, the brighter the lights.”
― Jerry Spinelli, quote from Milkweed
“You" - he pointed at me - "are the black pearl.”
― Jerry Spinelli, quote from Milkweed
“Bücher hatten einfach etwas Sympathisches, ihre bloße Existenz war erfreulich.”
― Jonas Jonasson, quote from The Girl Who Saved the King of Sweden
“When women respond negatively to misogynistic or rape humor, they are "sensitive" and branded as "feminist," a word that has, as of late, become a catchall term for "woman who does not tolerate bullshit.”
― Roxane Gay, quote from Bad Feminist
“In my new freedom I remember thinking: If one knows what he wants to do, others will not only not stand in the way but will lend a hand from simple curiosity and amazement.”
― Walker Percy, quote from Lancelot
“What if there were no punch lines? What if there were no indicators? What if I created tension and never released it? What if I headed for a climax, but all I delivered was an anticlimax? What would the audience do with all that tension? Theoretically, it would have to come out sometime. But if I kept denying them the formality of a punch line, the audience would eventually pick their own place to laugh, essentially out of desperation. This type of laugh seemed stronger to me, as they would be laughing at something they chose, rather than being told exactly when to laugh.”
― Steve Martin, quote from Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
“On the other hand, he was compassionate because he knew pain, real pain, and real suffering too. Yet even in those bouts when it looked for sure as if he would die, he was never given morphine, not even as his screams of pain rattled the palace windows. That poor child had traveled to the bottom of life and back again, and naturally that had had a profound effect on him.”
― Robert Alexander, quote from The Kitchen Boy: A Novel of the Last Tsar
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.