“Maybe the devil in human beings isn't the reflection of the devil, perhaps the devil is only a reflection of the savagery and brutality of our kind. Maybe what we've done is create the devil in our own image”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“There's no use wasting are energy being afraid of the devils, demons and things that go bump in the night... Because ultimately we'll never encounter anything more terrifying than the monster among us. Hell is where we make it.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“There are silences and silences. No one of them is like another. There is the silence of grief in velvet-draped rooms of a plushly carpeted funeral parlor which is far different from the bleak and terrible silence of grief in a widower's lonely bedroom.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“A swelled head is just a result of nature's frenzied efforts to fill a vacuum.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“But all organic matter must have cell structure,” Sara said. “Cell structure is virtually a definition of organic matter, a requisite of all living tissue, plant or animal.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“He saw that, without exception, human beings were driven by self-interest.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“mankind was, in reality, the most ruthless, dangerous, unforgiving species on earth.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“The mild wind made the trees sway gently, in a lullaby rhythm, and the resultant susurration was like the soft sighs and dreamy murmurs of a thousand peacefully slumbering children.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“She turned to him, shook her head. Her black hair tossed, and the beams of the late-afternoon sunlight played upon it, sending brief ripples of red and green and blue through it the same way that light, shimmering on the black surface of oil, creates short-lived, wriggling rainbows.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“That was when you discovered she’d recently begun using PCP—what’s sometimes called ‘angel dust’ on the street.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“Even though she knew it wasn't biologically possible for her heart to rise into her throat, she swallowed it anyway.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from Phantoms
“But the simple fact of bearing a responsibility can be something that gives meaning to life.”
― John Ajvide Lindqvist, quote from Little Star
“So, the fire giant. Fifty feet tall. On fire. Completely on fire, from head to foot. Carrying two swords. Flaming, of course. Matt barely had time to think before the Jotunn turned his way. He would say it looked at him, but for that, he'd need to see actual eyes. It had a mouth apparently, though, which opened and breathed ... yep, fire.”
― K.L. Armstrong, quote from Thor's Serpents
“When one has apparently made up one’s mind to spend the evening at home and has donned one’s house-jacket and sat down at the lamplit table after supper and do the particular job or play the particular game on completion of which one is in the habit of going to bed, when the weather out is so unpleasant as to make staying in the obvious choice, when one has been sitting quietly at the table for so long already that one’s leaving must inevitably provoke general astonishment, when the stairwell is in any case in darkness and the street door locked, and when in spite of all this one stands up, suddenly ill at ease, changes one’s coat, reappears immediately in street clothes, announces that one has to go out and after a brief farewell does so, feeling that one has left behind one a degree of irritation commensurate with the abruptness with which one slammed the apartment door, when one then finds oneself in the street possessed of limbs that respond to the quite unexpected freedom one has procured for them with out-of-the-ordinary agility, when in the wake of this one decision one feels capable, deep down, of taking any decision, when one realizes with a greater sense of significance than usual that one has, after all, more ability than one has need easily to effect and endure the most rapid change, and when in this frame of mind one walks the long city streets—then for that evening one has stepped completely outside one’s family, which veers into inessentiality, while one’s own person, rock solid, dark with definition, thighs thrusting rhythmically, assumes it true form.
The whole experience is enhanced when at that late hour one looks up a friend to see how he is.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from The Complete Short Stories
“At least there was another human being to share the weight of this crushing knowledge.”
― Blake Crouch, quote from Wayward
“The first beings probably were multicellular by mistake, sticky cells that couldn’t free themselves.”
― Sam Kean, quote from The Violinist's Thumb: And Other Lost Tales of Love, War, and Genius, as Written by Our Genetic Code
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.