“A lot of our perception of history is influenced by inaccurate movies.”
― Nelson DeMille, quote from Plum Island
“Everyone looked pensive, which is good cover-up for clueless.”
― Nelson DeMille, quote from Plum Island
“I don't like mysteries, which is why I want to solve them. It bothers me that there are things I don't know.”
― Nelson DeMille, quote from Plum Island
“The air was so thick with testosterone that the wallpaper was getting soggy.”
― Nelson DeMille, quote from Plum Island
“As with real estate, what matters with bullet holes is location, location, location.”
― Nelson DeMille, quote from Plum Island
“Anyway, I’m getting really intolerant of liars, fools, blowhards, and power freaks.”
― Nelson DeMille, quote from Plum Island
“When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”
― Nelson DeMille, quote from Plum Island
“Don’t buy anything. My philosophy is, if it flies, floats, or fucks, rent it.”
― Nelson DeMille, quote from Plum Island
“I read about a John Shelby of Thackham, England, who in 1672 was thrown from his horse into a thicket where he found an iron pot containing more than five hundred gold coins. According to the treasure trove laws of England, all hidden or lost property belonged to the Crown. However, Shelby refused to give the gold to the king’s officers, and he was arrested, tried for treason, and beheaded. This was probably a favorite story of the IRS.”
― Nelson DeMille, quote from Plum Island
“As we say, if your only tool is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.”
― Nelson DeMille, quote from Plum Island
“I thought again of how Tobin had already killed five good people and was about to be the cause of two more dying. I couldn’t believe that this little turd had actually caused all this death and misery. The only explanation I had for it was that short people with beady eyes and big appetites were ruthless and dangerous.”
― Nelson DeMille, quote from Plum Island
“Indeed, taxation and other forms of aggression-through-government are so taken for granted in our culture that one of our most popular sayings is that "nothing is certain except death and taxes." Yet slavery was once as universal. Taxation is thought to be indispensable to civilization today, just as slavery once was. Advocates of taxation claim that since most people pay assigned taxes before the guns show up, they have implicitly agreed to it as the price of living in "society." Most slaves obeyed their master before he got out the whip, yet we would hardly argue that this constituted agreement to their servitude. Today, we have an enlightened perspective on slavery, just as one day we will have an enlightened perspective on taxes and other forms of aggression we now think of as "the only way.”
― Mary J. Ruwart, quote from Healing Our World: In an Age of Aggression
“Samuel Beckett wrote, “Fail, fail again. Fail better.”
― Keith Ferrazzi, quote from Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time
“Helen found ways to sneak summer into the dark months of the year, canning and freezing the fruit off their trees in July and August and using it extravagantly throughout the winter- apple chutney with the Thanksgiving turkey, raspberry sauce across the top of a December pound cake, blueberries in January pancakes.”
― Erica Bauermeister, quote from The School of Essential Ingredients
“Housecats is smart too. Smarter’n a dog or a mule. Folks thinks they ain’t on account of you cain’t learn em nothin, but what it is is that they won’t learn nothin. They too smart.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Orchard Keeper
“Schumacher posited that people must make a serious shift in what they consider to be wealth and progress: "Ever-bigger machines, entailing ever-bigger concentrations of economic power and exerting ever-greater violence against the environment, do not represent progress: they are a denial of wisdom.”
― William McDonough, quote from Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
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.