“O love, how did you get here?
--Nick and the Candlestick”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems
“There is more than one good way to drown.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems
“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)”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems
“The storerooms are full of hearts.
This is the city of spare parts.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems
“Let me sit in a flowerpot,
The spiders won't notice.
My heart is a stopped geranium.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems
“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.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems
“Your shelled bed I remember.
Father, this thick air is murderous.
I would breathe water.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems
“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.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems
“the cat unsheathes its claws
the world turns”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems
“The words in his book wormed off the pages.
Everything glittered like blank paper.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems
“You inherit white heather, a bee's wing,
Two suicides, the family wolves,
Hours of blankness.”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems
“Through the mind like an oyster labors on and on, / A grain of sand is all we have”
― Sylvia Plath, quote from Plath: Poems
“How we all love extreme cases and apocalypses, fires, drownings, stranglings, and the rest of it. The bigger our mild, basically ethical, safe middle classes grow the more radical excitement is in demand. Mild or moderate truthfulness or accuracy seems to have no pull at all.”
― Saul Bellow, quote from Herzog
“And when that time comes, let's hope your friends outnumber your enemies.”
― Michelle Moran, quote from Cleopatra's Daughter
“.بیرت دەکەم؛ بەڵام چی تر وا ناڵێم”
― Marguerite Duras, quote from Hiroshima Mon Amour
“Life is such an effort, Child. It's a war that is renewed each day, and its moments of joy are brief parentheses for which you pay a cruel price.”
― Oriana Fallaci, quote from Letter to a Child Never Born
“You make me feel safe, Fern. You make me forget. And when I kiss you I just want to keep kissing you. Everything else falls away.”
― Amy Harmon, quote from Running Barefoot
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.