298 pages
Rating: (4.9K votes)
“Other than when I’m driving, I don’t try to look too far ahead, and once I got out, I never wanted to look back.”
― quote from Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption
“You had to be free in your heart. Guilt, fear, anger—they were all their own kinds of prison. You could be out in the world and still be doing time.”
― quote from Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption
“Put a man in a cage with beasts and throw away the key, and it’s usually not very long before the man is a beast himself.”
― quote from Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption
“I picture him, in those few seconds in between the fences, a stoner grin on his face, high at the thought that freedom was so close.”
― quote from Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption
“You had to be free in your heart. Guilt, fear, anger—they were all their own kinds of prison. You could be out in the world and still be doing time. Part of my finding that peace within myself was learning that I was strong enough to carry the load the Lord had asked me to.”
― quote from Picking Cotton: Our Memoir of Injustice and Redemption
“Despite the loud booing from Shari and Greg, Bird managed to punch the ball past the shortstop for a single.
“Lucky hit!” Greg yelled, cupping his hands into a megaphone.
Bird pretended not to hear him.”
― R.L. Stine, quote from Say Cheese and Die!
“Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows not victory or defeat. —THEODORE ROOSEVELT”
― David McCullough, quote from The Path Between the Seas: The Creation of the Panama Canal, 1870-1914
“Time is now measured from the night when death stole from me, took my battered heart, and left me behind.”
― Nicole Reed, quote from Ruining You
“Jelly beans! Millions and billions of purples and yellows and greens and licorice and grape and raspberry and mint and round and smooth and crunchy outside and soft-mealy inside and sugary and bouncing jouncing tumbling clittering clattering skittering fell on the heads and shoulders and hardhats and carapaces of the Timkin works, tinkling on the slidewalk and bouncing away and rolling about underfoot and filling the sky on their way down with all the colors of joy and childhood and holidays, coming down in a steady rain, a solid wash, a torrent of color and sweetness out of the sky from above, and entering a universe of sanity and metronomic order with quite-mad coocoo newness. Jelly beans!”
― Harlan Ellison, quote from "Repent, Harlequin!" Said the Ticktockman
“I don't know that you'll understand this, but once upon a time, long ago, I was a scholar and a marathon man, but that fella's gone now, dead I suppose, but I remember something he thought, which was that if you don't learn the mistakes of the past, you'll be doomed to repeat them. Well we've been making a mistake with people like you, because public trials are bullshit and executions are games for winners - all this time we should have been giving back pain. That's the real lesson. That's the loser's share, just pain, pure and simple, pain and torture, no hotshot lawyers running around trying to see that justice is done. I think we'd have a nice peaceful place here if all you warmakers knew you better not start something because if you lost, agony was just around the bend. That's what I'd like to give you. Agony. Not what you're suffering now. I mean a lifetime of it, 'cause that's the only degree of justice I think we're ready for down here yet, and I know any humanist might disagree with me too, but I don't think you will, because you had a lot to do with educating me, I'm like you now, except I'm better at it, because you're going to die and I've still got a long way to go.”
― William Goldman, quote from Marathon Man
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.