“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
“The empiricist assumes without any evidence or proof that his experiences somehow give him a magical access to reality. So completely does he identify experience and reality that he cannot liberate himself from thinking of the two as one and the same. In equating experience and reality, he is making a huge and unwarranted leap. But this breakdown of reason is not easy for him or us to recognize because our human minds have a built-in disposition toward illusion – the illusion that reality must be exactly the way we experience it. The irony is that many of the people who proceed in this irrational way think of themselves as following strictly along the pathways of reason.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, quote from What's So Great About Christianity
“When we returned from our jog, several Pirahãs were huddled in a corner of our house, and there was a strong smell of alcohol in the air. Those in the huddle looked conspiratorial and stared at us. Some seemed angry, others ashamed. Others just stared down at something on the ground that they were all surrounding. As I approached, they parted. Pokó’s baby was on the ground, dead. They had forced cachaça down its throat and killed it. “What happened to the baby?” I asked, almost in tears. “It died. It was in pain. It wanted to die,” they replied. I just picked up the baby and held it, with tears now beginning to stream down my cheeks. “Why would they kill a baby?” I asked myself in confusion and grief.”
― Daniel L. Everett, quote from Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle
“Today is such a time, when the project of interpretation is largely reactionary, stifling. Like the fumes of the automobile and of heavy industry which befoul the urban atmosphere, the effusion of interpretations of art today poisons our sensibilities. In a culture whose already classical dilemma is the hypertrophy of the intellect at the expense of energy and sensual capability, interpretation is the revenge of the intellect upon art.
Even more. It is the revenge of the intellect upon the world. To interpret is to impoverish, to deplete the world - in order to set up a shadow world of 'meanings.' It is to turn the world into this world. ('This world'! As if there were any other.)
The world, our world, is depleted, impoverished enough. Away with all duplicates of it, until we again experience more immediately what we have. ”
― Susan Sontag, quote from Against Interpretation and Other Essays
“The true signature and perhaps even the miracle of human love is helplessness, and all the more miraculous because it is a helplessness which we wittingly or unwittingly choose; in our love of a child, a partner, a work, or a road we have to take against the odds.”
― David Whyte, quote from Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
“All men are rabbits,” she retorts, her eyes flying open. “They sniff around, fuck whatever’s available, and then they run off. Fucking rabbits. And we’re Elmer Fudd, inadvertently blowing up our own lives while obsessively trying to hunt one down.”
― Kyra Davis, quote from Just One Night
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.