“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.”
“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.”
“Sometimes forgetting is the gift that we give ourselves”
“Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself. – Harlan Ellison”
“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.”
“It’s a bit poetic that it is so easy to take advantage of those who have no advantages to begin with.”
“The world is a cruel place made crueler still by man.”
“a can-opener with no tuna made no sense to Boxes.”
“Now begin in the middle, and later learn the beginning; the end will take care of itself.”
“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.”
“How far can you go into the woods?”
“Memories extend our lives backward through time, making them feel longer.”
“far can you go into the woods?”
“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.”
“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?”
“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.”
“You can always fall, Savannah, because I will be the one catching you.”
“Words words words. Words Words words. Words words Words.”
“He looked so boring I didn't dare get too close to him for fear he'd snatch part of my brain”
“Whimsy...needs to be fully experienced to be fully known. Whimsy doesn't care if you are the driver or the passenger; all that matters is that you are on your way.”
“It is inspiriting without doubt to whizz in a motor-car round the earth, to feel Arabia as a whirl of sand or China as a flash of rice-fields. But Arabia is not a whirl of sand and China is not a flash of rice-fields. They are ancient civilizations with strange virtues buried like treasures. If we wish to understand them it must not be as tourists or inquirers, it must be with the loyalty of children and the great patience of poets. To conquer these places is to lose them. The man standing in his own kitchen-garden, with fairyland opening at the gate, is the man with large ideas. His mind creates distance; the motor-car stupidly destroys it....”
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.