“I can deal with anything, as long as I know it's the truth. It's the lies that are hard.”
― Jennifer Laurens, quote from Penitence
“You're the first girl who's had the guts to touch my controls.”
― Jennifer Laurens, quote from Penitence
“I want to be the one protecting you.”
― Jennifer Laurens, quote from Penitence
“You have the poutiest lips I've ever seen."
"Pouty?' I snorted. "Like I look bratty?"
"Like you look kissable.”
― Jennifer Laurens, quote from Penitence
“He nodded, his forehead fused with mine. "My head fogs when you kiss me like that. I can't think," he murmured.
"It does?" I grinned. "I like making your head fog." I kissed him again.”
― Jennifer Laurens, quote from Penitence
“You feel control drain away like sand falling from your fingertips. You can't hold onto it. It's gone. And so are you.”
― Jennifer Laurens, quote from Penitence
“But there you are. Helpless. Unable to defend yourself. Vulnerable. Victim.”
― Jennifer Laurens, quote from Penitence
“Thirty minutes until I saw Weston. I shouldn't be this excited about a ride home.”
― Jennifer Laurens, quote from Penitence
“Heard joke once: Man goes to doctor. Says he's depressed. Says life seems harsh and cruel. Says he feels all alone in a threatening world where what lies ahead is vague and uncertain. Doctor says, "Treatment is simple. Great clown Pagliacci is in town tonight. Go and see him. That should pick you up." Man bursts into tears. Says, "But doctor...I am Pagliacci.”
― Alan Moore, quote from Watchmen
“The more a thing is perfect, the more it feels pleasure and pain.”
― Dante Alighieri, quote from The Divine Comedy
“There was a girl, and her uncle sold her. Put like that it seems so simple.
No man, proclaimed Donne, is an island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived and then by some means or other, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes- forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'll mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection) but still unique.
Without individuals we see only numbers, a thousand dead, a hundred thousand dead, "casualties may rise to a million." With individual stories, the statistics become people- but even that is a lie, for the people continue to suffer in numbers that themselves are numbing and meaningless. Look, see the child's swollen, swollen belly and the flies that crawl at the corners of his eyes, this skeletal limbs: will it make it easier for you to know his name, his age, his dreams, his fears? To see him from the inside? And if it does, are we not doing a disservice to his sister, who lies in the searing dust beside him, a distorted distended caricature of a human child? And there, if we feel for them, are they now more important to us than a thousand other children touched by the same famine, a thousand other young lives who will soon be food for the flies' own myriad squirming children?
We draw our lines around these moments of pain, remain upon our islands, and they cannot hurt us. They are covered with a smooth, safe, nacreous layer to let them slip, pearllike, from our souls without real pain.
Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives.
A life that is, like any other, unlike any other.
And the simple truth is this: There was a girl, and her uncle sold her.”
― Neil Gaiman, quote from American Gods
“I suppose it's like the ticking crocodile, isn't it? Time is chasing after all of us.”
― J.M. Barrie, quote from Peter Pan
“He had withdrawn solely for his own personal pleasure, only to be near to himself. No longer distracted by anything external, he basked in his own existence and found it splendid.”
― Patrick Süskind, quote from Perfume: The Story of a Murderer
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.