“I feel free and strong. If I were not a reader of books I could not feel this way. Whatever may happen to me, thank God that I can read, that I have truly touched the minds of other men.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“Reading is too intimate,' Spofforth said. 'It will put you too close to the feelings and ideas of others. It will disturb and confuse you.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“Reading is the subtle and thorough sharing of the ideas and feelings by underhanded means. It is a gross invasion of Privacy and a direct violation of the Constitutions of the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Age. The Teaching of Reading is equally a crime against Privacy and Personhood. One to five years on each count.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“It all began, I suppose, with learning to build fires—to warm the cave and keep the predators out. And it ended with time-release Valium.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“I am human. I talk and I listen and I read.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“When literacy died, so had history.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“New York is nearly a grave. The Empire State Building is its gravestone.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“If I cannot read and learn and have things that are worth thinking about, I would rather immolate myself than go on living. Synthetic”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“They were willing to accept their stringent piety, and silence, and sexual restraints, all unthinkingly, along with a few platitudes about Jesus and Moses and Noah; they were overwhelmed, however, at the effort it would require to understand the literature that was the real source of their religion. I”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“The Age of Technology has rusted.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“It feels terrible. Being in love feels terrible. I”
― Walter Tevis, quote from Mockingbird
“You were sleeping?" said Princess One.
"No," I said. "Sometimes I just like to lie in the dark for hours with my eyes closed.”
― Melissa Kantor, quote from If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where's My Prince?
“Love casts out fear; but conversely fear casts out love. And not only love. Fear also casts out intelligence, casts out goodness, casts out all thought of beauty and truth. What remains in the bum or studiedly jocular desperation of one who is aware of the obscene Presence in the corner of the room and knows that the door is locked, that there aren’t any windows. And now the thing bears down on him. He feels a hand on his sleeve, smells a stinking breath, as the executioner’s assistant leans almost amorously toward him. “Your turn next, brother. Kindly step this way.” And in an instant his quiet terror is transmuted into a frenzy as violent as it is futile. There is no longer a man among his fellow men, no longer a rational being speaking articulately to other rational beings; there is only a lacerated animal, screaming and struggling in the trap. For in the end fear casts out even a man’s humanity. And fear, my good friends, fear is the very basis and foundation of modern life. Fear of the much touted technology which, while it raises out standard of living, increases the probability of our violently dying. Fear of the science which takes away the one hand even more than what it so profusely gives with the other. Fear of the demonstrably fatal institutions for while, in our suicidal loyalty, we are ready to kill and die. Fear of the Great Men whom we have raised, and by popular acclaim, to a power which they use, inevitably, to murder and enslave us. Fear of the war we don’t want yet do everything we can to bring about.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Ape and Essence
“Every day, I would wake up and think you were perfect and every night I'd go to sleep thinking that, somehow, during the day, you got even more perfect.”
― Kristen Ashley, quote from With Everything I Am
“Love knows not distance;
It hath no continent;
It's eyes are for the stars.”
― Lucinda Riley, quote from The Seven Sisters
“Since future times are facing toward us, the times following them are further in the future, and all future times follow the present. That is why the weeks to follow are the same as the weeks ahead of us.”
― George Lakoff, quote from Metaphors We Live By
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.