“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”
“Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.”
“I'm glad we haven't got newspapers now. It's been much nicer without them.”
“Shhh Kelsey. I'm here. I'm not leaving you priya. Hush now. Mein aapka raksha karunga. I will watch over you priyatama.”
“Memory is the seamstress, and a capricious one at that. Memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, hither and thither. We know not what comes next, or what follows after. Thus, the most ordinary movement in the world, such as sitting down at a table and pulling the inkstand towards one, may agitate a thousand odd, disconnected fragments, now bright, now dim, hanging and bobbing and dipping and flaunting, like the underlinen of a family of fourteen on a line in a gale of wind.”
“April hath put a spirit of youth in everything. (Sonnet XCVIII)”
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.