Quotes from Pages for You

“I plan to learn enough to read you like a book.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“Such nights are possible, and we survive them. It is a matter of sleeping next to the adored body you no longer have the right or inclination to love. Whether you are the one who casts off, or are the cast of yourself; whether your arms are the recoilers, or the ones that reach wantingly, then pull back, remembering they are no longer wanted. Two bodies that are used to each other's rhythms and sleep sounds, that know the turnings and breathings, know not to worry about that cough or that brief garbled grunt, that wildly flung arm or that stone-cold foot. Bodies that soon will not know each other's night selves: will touch each other through jackets and jeans and the cooled-down air of reestablished acquaintance, if such a thing is possible between a given pair of ex-lovers.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“No wonder you want to be a writer. How can you not, with all that behind you? You practically are a novel already.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“It could not always be love in the afternoon and passion in the night, gifts given, notes written, meals fed to each other. It can't all be like that.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“This was another item about growing up: you encountered all the cliches of love and loss and heartbreak.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“Flannery craved a cigarette. Her nerves were so tense that only nicotine could soothe them, and for the first time, she genuinely understood how the drug worked. It wasn't just a prop or an affectation. It was a tool for mental health.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“Don;t blush, for God's sake. You and your blushing - you're like some Victorian maiden.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“She'd have to start smoking. There would be no other way through this.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“He did not know what it was like to be two women in love.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“And how easy it was to leave this life, after all - this life that could feel so present and permanent that departing from it must seem to require a tear into a different dimension. There the bunch of them were, young hopefuls, decorating their annually purged dorm rooms with postcards and prints and favorite photographs of friends, filling them with hot pots and dried flowers, throw rugs and stereos. Houseplants, a lamp, maybe some furniture brought up by encouraging parents. They nested there like miniature grownups. As if this provisional student life - with its brushfire friendships and drink-addled intimacies, its gorging on knowledge and blind sexual indulgences - could possibly last. As if it were a home, of any kind at all: someplace to gather one's sense of self. Flannery had never felt for a minute that these months of shared living took place on anything other than quicksand, and it had given this whole year (these scant seven or eight months, into which an aging decade or so had been condensed) a sliding, wavery feel. She came from earthquake country and knew the dangers of building on landfill. That was, it seemed to Flannery, the best description of this willed group project of freshman year: construction on landfill. A collective confusion of impressions and tendencies, mostly castoffs with a few keepers. What was there to count on in any of it? What structure would remain, founded on that?”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“I'd like to pay your palms the same favor that you pay these pages, searching them for grooves and images and the secret signs of hunger, as you may scan these words for hidden messages. The lines of your hand might be a guide to your gifts for pleasure, or a clue to where you'll take me, or a map of where I might take you.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“People are cruel, and they will do anything.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“You know, babe." Her voice had an older woman's weary advice in it. "You're so hungry. You want so much."
"Well." Flannery shrugged. "So what? I'll never get it."
"You might. If you stop asking."
"I'll never stop asking."
"I know." Anne touched her cheek. "It's one of the things that makes you strangely lovable.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“The heart did ache, actually. She felt a dull grind of lack somewhere near her diaphragm, a pain that occupied the space of something removed. A phantom limb. A scratchy hunger. The wasting muscle fatigue of want.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“She needed a nap already, and it was not yet ten o’clock.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“We will never be together. Sweetheart. I am too brittle, hidden, and snappish, and you are too married. You are altogether too married.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“He wants me back." The closing punctuation of "obviously" hung in the air. The confidence in her! Anne would always have it: the certainty that there would be a trail of people following her, wanting her love and her beauty. Flannery saw that confidence, and through the polluted air now between them it no longer charmed her. Not tonight it didn't. Flannery was not inclined to be one of that number.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“How could Flannery be so old and still not know herself? For this seventeen-year-old did feel old. Those private years of intense adolescent reading and music-fueled writing in her journal had made her sure she was full of maturity—of a certain unusual, and in its way impressive, emotional self-assurance. She had an alert awareness of what people were like. She’d talked two of her high-school friends through the loss of their virginity, even as she’d held on easily to her own.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“Once Flannery found it, she couldn’t stop wanting that pleasure, enjoying the sound of her own short breaths in the quiet night air. More. Over. Again. She had to make up for lost years.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

“Sometimes college seemed merely an endless exhausting string of appointments.”
― Sylvia Brownrigg, quote from Pages for You

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Popular quotes

“Music fills the space between them. Mark wants to take the pill that keeps him awake, but not in front of his daughter. Instead, he flirts. "There's a lot of trouble with a brown-eyed handsome man. In your travels have you found this to be true?"
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― Marie-Helene Bertino, quote from 2 A.M. at The Cat's Pajamas

“You see and hear that they lie,” said Ivan Ivanovitch, turning over on the other side, “and they call you a fool for putting up with their lying. You endure insult and humiliation, and dare not openly say that you are on the side of the honest and the free, and you lie and smile yourself; and all that for the sake of a crust of bread, for the sake of a warm corner, for the sake of a wretched little worthless rank in the service. No, one can’t go on living like this.”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from Stories

“After, presumably, Rosewater found out that Chekhov was not Jewish, he did not bother with any more questions about people with surnames ending with ov. That included my Israeli friend David Shem-tov. I don’t think you can find a more Israeli name than Shem-tov, but I could just imagine the Revolutionary Guards researchers saying to each other, “Chekhov, Molotov, Shem-tov, they are all the same!”
― Maziar Bahari, quote from Then They Came for Me: A Family's Story of Love, Captivity, and Survival

“the past would only fester and eat away at us if we tried to hold on to it too tightly.”
― Renee Carlino, quote from Swear on This Life

“It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky, up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made, or only just happened- Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many.”
― Mark Twain, quote from Adventures of Huckleberry Finn

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About BookQuoters

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.