“And I said, ‘I’m thinkin’ I’ve wasted too much time thinkin’, is what I’m thinkin'.”
― Melinda Haynes, quote from Mother of Pearl
“And though he has watched a decent age pass by, a man will sometimes still desire the world.”
― Melinda Haynes, quote from Mother of Pearl
“The Negro on saxophone blew out a language older than English and the glasses on the tables trembled”
― Melinda Haynes, quote from Mother of Pearl
“Sometimes partial kindness kills a person as bad as partial knowin.' Judy said this while she hugged the dress. "But then sometimes partial kindness and partial knowin' is the two best things in the world.”
― Melinda Haynes, quote from Mother of Pearl
“The water rippled when he leaned in; he studied what he saw. Against a background of blue sky, there was his face, broad of forehead and overly long, and he was surprised at the new look of age on him. To everybody else, I must look ten years beyond twenty-seven, he thought, and it made him glad. Even had begun to fear gaps and what they might mean. Wide-spanning spaces between age and its weight of language and ability had begun to feel like easy reasons for saying good-bye. He saw inside the calm reflection a gull flying low over his head, braced by clouds drifting east toward Runnelstown.
Turning back, he walked north around moss-based trees and finally found her digging wild onions growing thick next to fern. With her back to him she said, "Tired does one of two things-either builds the soul or breaks the heart. Can't decide which it is right now. All I know is I'm tired.”
― Melinda Haynes, quote from Mother of Pearl
“All he thinks while he studies pearlescent pigeons is this: I wish I knew how… I wish I knew… I ain’t ever gonna, but I wish I knew how it felt – (-to be free).”
― Melinda Haynes, quote from Mother of Pearl
“Running to catch up, feeling like he was in a constant state of chasing a shadow, he felt a drop of rain hit him square on the back of the neck. The weight of it so heavy it felt like a rock.”
― Melinda Haynes, quote from Mother of Pearl
“Thinking those old sticks looked authoritative, somehow. Like something belonging to an ancient queen come ashore by mistake in a common land full of limits.”
― Melinda Haynes, quote from Mother of Pearl
Melinda Haynes
Born place: in Hattiesburg, Mississippi., The United States
Born date December 3, 1955
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“I kept asking myself how a book could be infinite. I could not imagine any other than a cyclic volume, circular. A volume whose last page would be the same as the first and so have the possibility of continuing indefinitely.”
― Jorge Luis Borges, quote from The Garden of Forking Paths
“There was a time,” he said softly, “when I thought I’d found some kind of answer. God, we go through life fooling ourselves, thinking we’ve got the answer, only it’s never the answer really. I thought that being without Maudie would mean something to us. And it did, just for a while. It brought us together. I even stopped drinking. I broke down. I said to hell with this other kind of life. I thought there’s something to be said for honor in this world where there doesn’t seem to be any honor left. I thought that maybe happiness wasn’t really anything more than the knowledge of a life well spent, in spite of whatever immediate discomfort you had to undergo, and that if a life well spent meant compromises and conciliations and reconciliations, and suffering at the hands of the person you love, well then better that than live without honor.”
― William Styron, quote from Lie Down in Darkness
“I will not fail,' the water bearer's daughter vowed. 'But worse than failing is not to try at all. For then there can be no hope of success.”
― Cameron Dokey, quote from The Storyteller's Daughter: A Retelling of the Arabian Nights
“Rufus ignored him, muttering in the lost tongue of a pre-human civilisation that had worked great sorcerous happenings yet had never invented the vowel.”
― Jonathan L. Howard, quote from Johannes Cabal the Necromancer
“All my life I wanted somebody who knew more than I did to tell me the truth.”
― S.E. Hinton, quote from Tex
If You Dare
Pompeii
A Woman Of Thirty
Twisted
Finding Eden
Gods and GeneralsBookQuoters 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.
