“How else, except through being alone for a while, could you ever discover who you really are? But”
― Tananarive Due, quote from My Soul to Keep
“Michel, the tight-jawed president of the Black Student Caucus, who called her “little sister” and would have had potential if he’d remembered to sprinkle in some fun between bouts of righteous indignation.”
― Tananarive Due, quote from My Soul to Keep
“Your strength is the strength of stones. Suddenly,”
― Tananarive Due, quote from My Soul to Keep
“We only waste energy to have horrible fights with the people we love the most.”
― Tananarive Due, quote from My Soul to Keep
“If you believe it, Khaldun had said, I could never convince you otherwise. If you do not, nothing I tell you could sway you. I am the one who should be asking you: Is it the truth? No,”
― Tananarive Due, quote from My Soul to Keep
“When my first wife died long ago, in Ethiopia, I thought I knew grief. But until you have witnessed the death of a loved one to another man’s violence, you know nothing of grief.”
― Tananarive Due, quote from My Soul to Keep
“My mother used to say to me that she collected sorrows and put them in her pocket. Walking around with them that way, by and by, you just learn to carry them all a bit better, to stand up a bit straighter. That’s all life is, on this earth anyway.”
― Tananarive Due, quote from My Soul to Keep
“a remark Khaldun had made once, when Dawit returned from the battlefield against the Italians: What do you gain from it, Dawit? Must a scythe prove itself sharper than a blade of grass? Let grass grow as it will. While”
― Tananarive Due, quote from My Soul to Keep
“They had to work at it, but they found their common ground. Ultimately, though, their differences returned, and she wondered how deeply they ran. How could she continue to overlook them, when they loomed so large? Jessica”
― Tananarive Due, quote from My Soul to Keep
“Is that your lesson?” she asked him. “I’m sorry to hear that, because you always said just the opposite. Love what you have while you have it, before it’s gone. Isn’t that what you were always trying to tell me?” Her damp eyes glimmered.”
― Tananarive Due, quote from My Soul to Keep
“When you're of a different race people distrust you because they are afraid. If you don't give them reason to dislike you, it becomes their problem, not yours.”
― Elizabeth Haydon, quote from The Floating Island
“The "hillbilly" girls were generating more enriched Tubealloy per run than the PhDs had...The District Engineer understood perfectly. Those girls...had been trained like soldiers. Do what you're told. Don't ask why.”
― Denise Kiernan, quote from The Girls of Atomic City: The Untold Story of the Women Who Helped Win World War II
“You and I? It may end badly. I may get hurt. But guess what? I don’t care! I’ve never had my heart broken. Maybe I’m fine with risking it, because it’s better than being afraid and going through life bored.”
― Jasinda Wilder, quote from Falling Under
“Sometimes, the scales of justice find a level of their own, without our help... And sometimes, in seeking justice, we don't always serve it.”
― Susanna Kearsley, quote from The Splendour Falls
“Con los países pobres ocurre lo mismo que ocurre con los pobres de cada país: los medios masivos de comunicación sólo se dignan echarles una ojeada cuando ofrecen alguna desgracia espectacular que puede tener éxito en el mercado. ¿Cuántas personas deben ser destripadas por guerra o terremoto, o ahogadas por inundación, para que algunos países sean noticia y aparezcan por una vez en el mapa del mundo? ¿Cuántos espantos debe acumular un muerto de hambre para que las cámaras lo enfoquen por una vez en la vida? El mundo tiende a convertirse en el escenario de un gigantesco reality show. Los pobres, los desaparecidos de siempre, sólo aparecen en la tele como objeto de burla de la cámara oculta o como actores de sus propias truculencias. El desconocido necesita ser reconocido, el invisible quiere hacerse visible, busca raíz el desarraigado. Lo que no existe en la televisión, ¿existe en la realidad? Sueña el paria con la gloria de la pantalla chica, donde cualquier espantapájaros se transfigura en galán irresistible. Con tal de entrar en el olimpo donde los teledioses moran, algún infeliz ha sido capaz de pegarse un tiro ante las cámaras de un programa de entretenimientos. Últimamente, la llamada telebasura está teniendo, en unos cuantos países de América latina, tanto o más éxito que las telenovelas: la niña violada llora ante el periodista que la interroga como si la violara otra vez; este monstruo es el nuevo hombre elefante, miren, señoras y señores, no se pierdan este fenómeno increíble: la mujer barbuda busca novio; un señor gordo dice estar embarazado. Hace treinta y poco años, en Brasil, ya los concursos del horror convocaban multitudes de candidatos y ganaban enormes teleaudiencias: ¿Quién es el enano más bajito del país? ¿Quién es el narigón de nariz más larga, que la ducha no le moja los pies? ¿Quién es el desgraciado más desgraciado de todos? En los concursos de desgraciados, desfilaba por los estudios la corte de los milagros: la niña sin orejas, comidas por las ratas; el débil mental que había pasado treinta años encadenado a la pata de una cama; la mujer que era hija, cuñada, suegra y esposa del marido borracho que la había dejado inválida. Y cada desgraciado tenía su hinchada, que desde la platea gritaba, a coro:
-¡Ya ganó! ¡Ya ganó!”
― Eduardo Galeano, quote from Upside Down: A Primer for the Looking-Glass World
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.