“Context is to data what water is to a dolphin”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Olympos
“Failing tastes of bile and dog vomit. Shame on any man who gets used to that taste.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Olympos
“... The continuation of her life was more than another day of breathing, but was the gift of another day of engagement with her beloved across the spectrum of all things.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Olympos
“All spirits are enslaved which serve things evil.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Olympos
“...Data itself... was tolerable. It was the constant nerve-web-expanding pain of context that would kill him.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from Olympos
“Aeneas' mother is a star?"
"No; a goddess."
I said cautiously, "Venus is the power that we invoke in spring, in the garden, when things begin growing. And we call the evening star Venus."
He thought it over. Perhaps having grown up in the country, among pagans like me, helped him understand my bewilderment. "So do we, he said. "But Venus also became more...With the help of the Greeks. They call her Aphrodite...There was a great poet who praised her in Latin. Delight of men and gods, he called her, dear nurturer. Under the sliding star signs she fills the ship-laden sea and the fruitful earth with her being; through her the generations are conceived and rise up to see the sun; from her the storm clouds flee; to her the earth, the skillful maker, offers flowers. The wide levels of the sea smile at her, and all the quiet sky shines and streams with light..."
It was the Venus I had prayed to, it was my prayer, though I had no such words. They filled my eyes with tears and my heart with inexpressible joy.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, quote from Lavinia
“have to know, he thought. I have to get out there and talk to people and see for myself. But there’s nothing I can do now, and, dammit, I need some sleep.”
― Jeff Shaara, quote from The Steel Wave
“You will choose your path, or perhaps it will choose you.”
― Gemma Malley, quote from The Resistance
“Truth is, I'm a good Catholic girl. The faith has always been elusive, but the guilt is intractable. ”
― Janet Evanovich, quote from Plum Spooky
“Many people suffer all their lives from this oppressive feeling of guilt, the sense of not having lived up to their parents' expectations. This feeling is stronger than any intellectual insight they might have, that it is not a child's task or duty to satisfy his parents needs. No argument can overcome these guilt feelings, for they have their beginnings in life's earliest periods, and from that they derive their intensity and obduracy.”
― Alice Miller, quote from The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
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.