“The eye is always caught by light, but shadows have more to say.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror
“If you're ever in doubt, throw a pepper in the air. If it fails to come down, you have gone mad, so don't trust in anything.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror
“Even God used silence as a strategy.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror
“Thanks to our artists, we pretend well, living under canopies of painted clouds and painted gods, in halls of marble floors across which the sung Masses paint hope in deep impatsi of echo. We make of the hollow world a fuller, messier, prettier place, but all our inventions can't create the one thing we require: to deserve any fond attention we might accidentally receive, to receive any fond attention we don't in the course of things deserve. We are never enough to ourselves because we can never be enough to another. Any one of us walks into any room and reminds its occupant that we are not the one they most want to see. We are never the one. We are never enough.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror
“She dreamed of leaving, but she had too little exposure to the world to imagine where to go.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror
“I believe in the floor. I put it in place and I walk on it. Faith is a floor. If you don't work at making it for yourself, you have nothing to walk on.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror
“Speaking uses us up, speeds us up. Without prayer, that act of confession for merely existing, one might live forever and not know it.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror
“He had forgotten how convincing the world could look, how sure of itself: its outlines and edges; it's gradations, recessions, protrusions; it's startling and vulgar colors.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror
“What more does one ask of life, really, but to stagger from moment to moment with a reason to wake and wait for the next reason to wake?”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror
“But there was the mirror in which I would glimpse his handsome form, because mirrors don't lie about men, only women.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror
“Happiness now sometimes meant turning away from what one remembered of earlier, better happiness.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror
“Please, I know nothing of the world, except my father is lost in it.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror
“No one survives in times of war unless they make war their home. How did I get so old and wise, but for welcoming war into my house and making friends with him? Better to befriend the enemy and hang on. Something worse might come along, which might be amusing or might not.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror
“Before catechisms can instill a proper humility, small children know the truth that their own existence has caused the world to bloom into being.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror
“I’m a priest, I know better than most when a lie is permitted.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror
“The years peeled slowly off, one by one, or perhaps dozens at a time.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror
“The thing about a mirror is this: The one who stares into it is condemned to consider the world from her own perspective. Even a bowed mirror works primarily by engaging the eyes, and she who centers herself in its surface is unlikely to notice anyone in the background who lacks a certain status, distinction.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror
“Hello, this is I, and these are my arms and legs, which are useful, and this inconvenient hump is my sorrow, which is less than useful, but I've learned how to hump it around, so pay it no mind.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Mirror Mirror
“Overeating is the addiction of choice of carers, and that's why it's come to be regarded as the lowest-ranking of all the addictions. It's a way of fucking yourself up while still remaining fully functional, because you have to. Fat people aren't indulging in the "luxury" of their addiction making them useless, chaotic, or a burden. Instead, they are slowly self-destructing in a way that doesn't inconvenience anyone. And that's why it's so often a woman's addiction of choice. All the quietly eating mums. All the KitKats in office drawers. All the unhappy moments, late at night, caught only in the fridge light.”
― Caitlin Moran, quote from How to Be a Woman
“Because I sincerely hate and despise them. Not pity them, no—only hate and despise. I can justify the stupidity and brutality of the kid I just passed all I want— the social conditions, the appalling upbringing, anything at all—but I now clearly see that he’s my enemy, the enemy of all that I love, the enemy of my friends, the enemy of what I hold most sacred. And I don’t hate him theoretically, as a “typical specimen,” but him as himself, him as an individual. I hate his slobbering mug, the stink of his unwashed body, his blind faith, his animosity toward everything other than sex and booze. There he goes, stomping around, the oaf, who half a year ago was still being thrashed by a fat-bellied father in a vain attempt to prepare him for selling stale flour and old jam; he’s wheezing, the dumb lug, struggling to recall the paragraphs of badly crammed regulations, and he just can’t figure out whether he’s supposed to cut the noble don down with his ax, shout “Stop!” or just forget about it. No one will find out anyway, so he’ll forget about it, go back to his recess, stuff some chewing bark into his mouth and chew it loudly, drooling and smacking his lips. And there’s nothing that he wants to know, and there’s nothing he wants to think about.”
― Arkady Strugatsky, quote from Hard to Be a God
“He looked like a giant lion lying belly-up in the sun with his legs hanging open, licking his paws and airing out his balls.”
― Tina Reber, quote from Love Unrehearsed
“I love you. I'm not sure if it's the way you want me to. I think it might be. But I know that I love you. I absolutely love you.”
― Kelley Armstrong, quote from The Rising
“Realism can break a writer's heart.”
― Salman Rushdie, quote from Shame
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.