“O love, how did you get here?
--Nick and the Candlestick”
“There is more than one good way to drown.”
“I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted
To lie with my hands turned up
and be utterly empty.
How free it is, you have no idea how free -
The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,
And it asks for nothing. ~ Tulips (1961)”
“The storerooms are full of hearts.
This is the city of spare parts.”
“Let me sit in a flowerpot,
The spiders won't notice.
My heart is a stopped geranium.”
“Perhaps you considered yourself an oracle,
Mouthpiece of the dead, or of some god or other.
Thirty years now I have labored
To dredge the silt from your throat.
I am none the wiser.”
“Your shelled bed I remember.
Father, this thick air is murderous.
I would breathe water.”
“I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off.”
“the cat unsheathes its claws
the world turns”
“The words in his book wormed off the pages.
Everything glittered like blank paper.”
“You inherit white heather, a bee's wing,
Two suicides, the family wolves,
Hours of blankness.”
“Through the mind like an oyster labors on and on, / A grain of sand is all we have”
“They toured the new hospital, the renovated and expanded McVeigh Home, and the (named without apparent irony) Bay View Home for the Blind and Helpless.”
“I expect you think I’m a bit forward,’ remarked Zach. ‘Wot?”
“Katy
I always had this plan for the off chance I was around for the end of the world. I’d climb up on my roof top, turn up the radio, blast R.E.M.’s It’s The End of The World, and watch it all go down from my lofty perch.
Except real life rarely turned out that cool.
And it was really happening—it was the end of the world as we knew it, and I sure as hell didn’t feel fine.
Everything had changed and we had been the catalyst for it all.”
“I cannot help but wonder if any parents ever actually schedule in adolescent drama on their day planners. Looks like a slow week, Sarah. I guess I can pencil in your eating disorder.”
“If you’re angry with me, say it. If I’ve done something you don’t like, tell me. If you want to end this marriage, have the courage to end it cleanly so that I might—might—be able to recover from it. Because if you keep looking at me as though you wish we weren’t married, you’re going to destroy me.”
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.
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