Quotes from Penpal

252 pages

Rating: (9.5K votes)


“We want so badly to be happy – to live the kinds of lives that we always hoped we’d live – that we give gifts to ourselves by remembering things not as they were, but as we wish they were.”
― quote from Penpal


“Truth to tell, at any point in our lives we’ve forgotten more than we know about our own history. The world moves on, and so do we, and what was once important fades away.”
― quote from Penpal


“Sometimes forgetting is the gift that we give ourselves”
― quote from Penpal


“Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself. – Harlan Ellison”
― quote from Penpal


“Our loved ones pass away or simply leave our lives forever too soon, and we think to ourselves, “I wasn’t ready for you to leave. It just wasn’t time,” because we’re never truly ready, because it’s never truly time.
So we keep them in our memories.
And when we regret that we don’t have more memories of them, maybe our minds give us more gifts; gradually we find ourselves remembering them being with us in times and places that they couldn’t have been, and gradually we stop correcting ourselves because, well, we want them to have been there.”
― quote from Penpal



“It’s a bit poetic that it is so easy to take advantage of those who have no advantages to begin with.”
― quote from Penpal


“The world is a cruel place made crueler still by man.”
― quote from Penpal


“a can-opener with no tuna made no sense to Boxes.”
― quote from Penpal


“Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself.”
― quote from Penpal


“Our loved ones pass away or simply leave our lives forever too soon, and we think to ourselves, “I wasn’t ready for you to leave. It just wasn’t time,” because we’re never truly ready, because it’s never truly time. So we keep them in our memories.”
― quote from Penpal



“How far can you go into the woods?”
― quote from Penpal


“Memories extend our lives backward through time, making them feel longer.”
― quote from Penpal


“far can you go into the woods?”
― quote from Penpal


“Our minds work hard to avoid dissonance – if we hold a belief strongly enough, our minds will forcefully reject conflicting evidence so that we can maintain the integrity of our understanding of the world.”
― quote from Penpal


“Right as my eyes were about to move onto the next photo in the sequence, they froze and focused on something that vexed me so powerfully that I can now, as I write this, distinctly remember feeling dizzy and capable of only a single, repeating thought. Why am I in this picture?”
― quote from Penpal



“When you try to reconstruct the series, you find that it isn’t complete, but maybe this never really bothers you, because you can’t miss what you don’t remember.”
― quote from Penpal


Popular quotes

“Every child, every person needs to know that they are a source of joy; every child, every person, needs to be celebrated. Only when all of our weaknesses are accepted as part of our humanity can our negative, broken self-images be transformed.”
― Jean Vanier, quote from Becoming Human


“Connecting to the outernet was less of a shock this time, as the monitor gave him a sense of distance from it, but it was still annoying. How did these people live with such a system, stalked by advertisements and "free" offers and icons that would take you to another site, unasked-for, the moment you gave them your attention? It was like wending your way through an obstacle course. Perhaps after a while you just learned to tune it all out... or perhaps you could buy programs that did it for you. He would have to design himself one of those before he did any more real work on the outernet, though he suspected that the consumer programs which were stalking him were capable of adapting to anything he could turn out quickly.

Advertising: the ultimate predator.

He longed for the simplicity of the Gueran network, which simply did what it was supposed to and no more. When had these people lost touch with the fact that the purpose of a network was to facilitate communication, not impede it?”
― C.S. Friedman, quote from This Alien Shore


“Well fuck me sideways 'til I cry”
― Sarah Monette, quote from Mélusine


“That was the thing about guys, though: Sometimes, they had the emotional depth of a flea.”
― Sara Shepard, quote from Twisted


“My hope is that learning about past evils will help us to avoid them in the future.”
― Livia E. Bitton-Jackson, quote from I Have Lived a Thousand Years


Interesting books

Family Wisdom from the Monk Who Sold His Ferrari
(852)
Family Wisdom from t...
by Robin S. Sharma
Sacrifice
(1.9K)
Sacrifice
by Cayla Kluver
The Worthing Saga
(8K)
The Worthing Saga
by Orson Scott Card
The Unincorporated Man
(2.8K)
The Unincorporated M...
by Dani Kollin
As I Walked Out One Midsummer Morning
(3.6K)
As I Walked Out One...
by Laurie Lee
Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained
(6.5K)
Paradise Lost and Pa...
by John Milton

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.