“Owen gave a quiet sob. ‘It is. Dear God, it is.’ He crossed himself and began chanting. ‘Our Father, who aren’t in Devon, hallowed be thy new persona as a dame. Give us this day my coach and horses and do unto them before it is nobler in the mind, a sling, or an arrow – anything, God and saints preserve us, holy outrageous fortune Batman, partibus deus biggus omnibus dieu et mon droit gaudete all around my hat, inshallah, inshallah, Barukh ata Adonai Eloheinu melekh ha‑olam, ha‑gomel lahayavim tovot sheg'malani kol tov! Ooh Mummy, Phuphox ache, cor luv a duck, amen.’ Owen, having covered his available gibbering-bases, then covered his face in his hands and wept.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“[Someone had left the lid off the big tin of fairies and, if they were to be used up before they went off then lovely, moist, stale-fairy cakes were the only option. Nota bene, years later all of the magic would be taken out of these little confections and they would become known in “global” “English” rather more drearily as “cupcakes”. This is why you can no longer buy tins of either fresh or dried fairies except in speciality comestible shops.]”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“Simultaneous superposition of clement brane-universe alternatives made such a mockery of free market capitalism in so many ways. On more than one occasion a mechanism had been purchased with some very foreign currency and twice, to the best of his knowledge, he had been robbed. It all depended on what Mr C expected to find when a customer opened the door from everything outside and came into the shop where all that there was, had been and likely would be was what was in the shop there and then, not What Was outside previously and was probably no longer, for the moment.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“Oh possibly so, Rex, but our xenoscientibiozoologisters attributed their ill-temper to the Surrey T-Rex’s having short forearms in combination very itchy testicles – no chance whatsoever of a good scratch do you see? Hell on Earth I suppose, especially during the humid summer months of the Maastrichtian Cretaceous in the suburbs of Godalming.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“A nurse worked her way down the line with a clipboard, taking domestic details and assessing the extent of each patient’s worthiness or worthlessness on a scale of “Just Feels Like Bothering Everyone Else With Their Problems” to “Complete And Utter Failure In Life”.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“Mr Bobbydazzler issued Mr Cadwallader with a fixed penalty notice for wasting police time and Mr Cadwallader paid it with some reluctance. Not a lot of people know that this is a payment option, and most people still pay fixed penalty notices with money.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“Mothballs. Why do I sense mothballs?’ ‘Mothballs. Yes sir, but a lot has happened since puberty. They don’t affect the way I ride a bicycle.’ ‘Excellent. Now, we... what?”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“Now look, old chap, we sort of need you to save England and, er, possibly the rest of the planet too if you can... You, er, well – you have washed your hands, I suppose?”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“Mr Bobbydazzler, although very official, was not a member of the Official Fan Club. He was a policeman and, as such, not a fan of very much at all, since enthusiasm usually just resulted in more paperwork.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“The Labrador was called “Shakespeare” and, like his namesake, he didn’t think much at all really, except “food” and “wow, sexy leg or what?” and “this cushion will be the mother of my puppies” and “food” and “pee” and “walkies” and “food”.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“The tanned man manning the tannoy system intoned ‘Four point nine, four point nine, five point zero, four point nine, four point seven, five point zero...’ and public people began throwing bouquets of flowers, confirming thereby that the English have always been, as one, quite clinically insane. Functional in extremis of course, but clinically insane nonetheless.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“Actually, that makes it all sound far too utilitarian since every model also came with an ignition switch, a joystick to steer by and two cunning pedals – one for “go” and one for “stop”. These were even labelled Acceleratrix and Enstopinator.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“The weather was expected to continue as sunny or overcast with occasional showers or dry spells, some wind and some no wind at all. It was possible that there might be a light frost in the morning, or it could turn in places to snow or fog, or into a spectacularly fine sunrise.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“Of course, of course my dear fellow, but you can’t make a hen without first breaking an egg.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“Taxation was raised again to fund the expanded Air Force required to keep the taxpayers who were expected to fund the required expanded Air Force in a position in which they could be required to pay the extra taxes that would keep them paying the taxes. Further taxes were required to fund the extra demands made upon the services of the Ministry of Justice in order to handle all of the extra cases of non-payment. Hearing cases in absentia was just as expensive, if not more so, than hearing them with the accused actually in the dock rather than naffing off at relativity-inducing speed to some distant star with grandma and grandma’s walking frame strapped onto the roof-rack to make room inside for the beer.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“The internet was banned and Mrs Shafquat Husain O’Reilly Kim-Lee, the American president (Republican, on an Evangelical ticket), rather dramatically, during a globally-televised media circus, broke the “In case of Emergency” glass and threw the big industrial “Stop Internet” switch on the wall in the Ovoid Room of The Whitehouse.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“The “ignition” was a very understated and terribly English affair indeed, involving simply an advanced magneto and some leaded petrol rather than a column of fire, five astronuts (sic) and a mission control staffed by folk mouthing “gosh - we have lift-off” and “the egret has landed”.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“Maybe that’s why the dinosaurs died out? Persistent sky-diving while still equipped with anatomy quite unsuited to the pulling of emergency or secondary rip-cords combined, fatally, with poor quality-control in the primary parachute packing area. Lousy origami combined with an overweening love of recreational free-fall? Given the number of accidents that still happen even after sixty million years of experience and development of the sport you’ve got to wonder – those early sky-diving days can’t have been pretty.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“Governments sacked these obviously incompetent ministers in charge of their Exchequers and passed new laws enforcing the old laws about observing the ancient laws regarding not evading tax laws.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“Such population as did involuntarily remain, usually for such reasons as extraordinary congenital suitability to armchair sitting or exceptional talent at waiting for someone else to do things, found itself in dire straits.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“I very rarely think, it makes my head ache so.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“Alright then – but we’ll get receipts for everything. You will be paid back, I promise you. Even if we have to sell something else to the Chinese. Wales or something –Beijing were asking about Wales only last year.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“Sometimes, my dear chap, you may talk until you’re blue in the face but there may be no alternative to surgery.’ ‘Surgery?’ ‘Surgery – lopping bits off, cutting things out and occasionally just wildly mincing the innards.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“I couldn’t half do with them letting us out of these straps so that I can visit the Usual Offices, Male, Lower Ranks, For the use of to cry havoc and let slip a few dogs of war”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“Front-line Initial Assault Teams are the soldiers who are parachuted down to the battlefield first and it’s their job to hold the fort against ridiculous odds so that the rest of the army can sort itself out and get into fighting formation without being bothered by the enemy. I should hate to be in a front-line team, dropped from low orbit with nothing but a rifle, a cricket cup and a packet of Wurther’s Originals for energy.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“Everyone was disturbed in their reverie at some time by Higginbotham, but he was the English space industry’s leading expert on the use of Yorkshire-mined small-lump carbon as a propellant and thus was accorded a certain flexibility in regards to his dress and mannerisms. In short, Higginbotham was ruddy weird but rather unfortunately essential.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“I’m definitely feeling less than peaceful. I could eat a hippie without even removing the flowers first.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“It was all about as encouraging as the sight of an approaching enema-trolley with a squeaky wheel and being pushed by a trainee nurse called Gertrude Shovenhose whose ears had been cauliflowered by years spent as a prop-forward in the hospital’s rugby team.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“That was one of the disadvantages to having several discrete functional brains that only shared information with each other once or twice a day. You never quite knew what your other more domestically-minded brains were thinking or doing. Some male Humans have a similar coordination problem with their internal brains and their trouser attachments – so much to ogle, so few opportunities to think about it properly or discreetly or to run reality checks.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“The barouche and the Maria-of-Colour, complete with prisoners’ hands and cries reaching through the bars, were lowered back to the roadway under the terms of Article 1, Paragraph 1, Sub-section 1, Clause 2 of the Because I Bleedin’ Well Say So Mush Act of eleven twenty-three, or possibly half-past seven.”
― quote from NGLND XPX
“If the currents do conspire against us, know that I will find you, I will never stop looking for you.”
― Amy A. Bartol, quote from Intuition
“What's the use in waiting until the right moment if that moment never comes?" I say. "What if the moment escapes you in a split second when your focus was elsewhere?”
― Nina LaCour, quote from Everything Leads to You
“A label doesn't make something so. A label is just a word. It's what a person does that makes them who they are”
― Heather Brewer, quote from Twelfth Grade Kills
“Dear patient (first name, last name)! You are presently located in our experimental state hospital. The measures taken to save your life were drastic, extremely drastic (circle one). Our finest surgeons, availing themselves of the very latest achievements of modern medicine, performed one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten operations (circle one) on you. They were forced, acting wholly in your interest to replace certain parts of your organism with parts obtained from other persons, in strict accordance with Federal Law (Rev. Stat. Comm. 1-989/0-001/89/1). The notice you are now reading was thoughtfully prepared in order to help you make the best possible adjustment to these new if somewhat unexpected circumstances in your life, which, we hasten to remind you, we have saved. Although it was found necessary to remove your arms, legs, spine, skill, lungs, stomach, kidneys, liver, other (circle one or more), rest assured that these mortal remains were disposed of in a manner fully in keeping with the dictates of your religion; they were, with the proper ritual, interred, embalmed, mummified, buried at sea, cremated with the ashes scattered in the wind—preserved in an urn—thrown in the garbage (circle one). The new form in which you will henceforth lead a happy and healthy existence may possibly occasion you some surprise, but we promise that in time you will become, as indeed all our dear patients do, quite accustomed to it We have supplemented your organism with the very best, the best, perfectly functional, adequate, the only available (circle one) organs at our disposal, and they are fully guaranteed to last a year, six months, three months, three weeks, six days (circle one).”
― Stanisław Lem, quote from The Futurological Congress: From the Memoirs of Ijon Tichy
“The function of profits, finally, is to put constant and unremitting pressure on the head of every competitive business to introduce further economies and efficiencies, no matter to what stage these may already have been brought.”
― Henry Hazlitt, quote from Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest & Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics
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The Last Mile
Notes from Undergrou...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.
