“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
“Le raccontai tutta la mia vita, non quella passata ma quella che avrei vissuto in futuro.”
― Mario Vargas Llosa, quote from Aunt Julia and the Scriptwriter
“Everything one has a right to do is not best to be done.” This in essence was to be the Burke thesis: that principle does not have to be demonstrated when the demonstration is inexpedient.”
― Barbara W. Tuchman, quote from The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam
“And that’s my title, now. Master of the Games.”
― Margaret Weis, quote from Time of the Twins
“Don't get your balls crossed about it.”
― John Irving, quote from Last Night in Twisted River
“To reject one paradigm without simultaneously substituting another is to reject science itself.”
― Thomas S. Kuhn, quote from The Structure of Scientific Revolutions
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.