“God is bigger than our sins. God wants you as you are—stumbling, sinning, confused.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“Whatever happens after this, I just want you to know that this was worth it. You were worth it. You were worth everything.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“Find whatever love is left in your life and hold on to it tightly. And one day, things will have gotten less gray, less dull.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“One day, you might find that you have a life again. A life that makes you happy.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“a cold, self-righteous prig, who goes regularly to church, may be far nearer to hell than a prostitute.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“The pain of one-sided love, of knowing that I had loved her more than she had loved me”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“if this was what love was, then I didn’t know how anyone could bear the weight of it.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“There was life after fucking up, after all, even for those who lived without fucking.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“she was the kind of woman who couldn’t live without meaning, powerful and real meaning, in her life.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“There was a beat of perfect completeness, a moment where I felt as if I could pluck each and every atom out of the air, where magic and God and something sweetly beyond complete understanding was real, completely real.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“I cared about her as a person, as a soul, and I wanted to fuck her, and that was the recipe for something much worse than carnal sin. It was a recipe for falling in love.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“I wanted to show her all of my burdens and have her lift them from me with her clever mind and her elegant compassion.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“Do we focus on pruning out all evil, or do we focus on growing love?”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“Worry is a sin, even I know that, yet I am more than just a lily of the field. I’m a lily that’s been plucked from the ground and laid at your feet. When it comes to you, I’m rootless and helpless and at your mercy for sunshine and water. And I’m not even supposed to be yours. How can I not worry?”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“This is what laying down a cross feels like. This is what taking up a new life feels like…it feels like Poppy Danforth.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“This was love, this was sacrifice, the opposite of sin, and maybe it was fucked up to feel like God was here with us in the back room of a strip club, but I did, like He was bearing witness to this moment where Poppy opened herself to the worst of me and erased it with her love, just like God did for us sinners every moment of every day.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“A man and a woman wanting each other is by far one of the least sinful things I've seen”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“was the only halo I ever wanted again, a circle of wicked wants and devilish delights.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“God dwelled in sex and marriage just as much as He dwelled in celibacy and service,”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“Was it truly so terrible for a man of God to have sex? The Protestants had been doing it for half a millennium and they seemed no more hell-bound than the Catholics for it. And was it so wrong to want both? I wanted to lead this church, I wanted to help people find God. But dammit, I wanted Poppy too, and I didn’t think it was fair that I had to choose.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do…for I have the desire to do what is right, but I cannot carry it out. What a wretched man I am.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“I’d seen enough grief as a priest to know that people never really moved on, at least not in the linear, segmented way our culture expected people to.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“Could a vow be not all the way broken? Could a sin be not all the way committed?”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“She was indeed the perfect package on the surface…but below it, I sensed she was so much more. Messy and passionate and raw and creative—a cyclone forced into an eggshell.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“Sometimes the best decisions were the ones with the most short-term unhappiness”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“As always, she had both of us under control when she surrendered her control to me.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do, I do not do, but what I hate I do… for I have the desire to do what is right, but I cannot carry it out. What a wretched man I am.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“In a way, it’s easier to dwell on sin and guilt than it is to dwell on love and forgiveness—especially”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“I thought, this is what it’s like to be torn apart for love. This is what it means to be reborn.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“Her eyelashes made me hard. That was a new benchmark for me, I had to admit.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest
“They looked at me, and were so full of delight in the pleasure they were giving me that some final thread of resistance gave way and I understood not only how entirely generous they were but also that generosity might be the greatest pleasure there is.”
― William Maxwell, quote from So Long, See You Tomorrow
“Dear Anyone: This is a letter from one anyone to another anyone, no names required, because nobody really knows anyway. Names don't make a hell of a lot of difference. The world is made up entirely of strangers. Millions and millions of them. Everyone is a stranger to everyone else. Sometimes we think we know other people, especially those we supposedly are close to, but if we really knew them, why are we so often surprised by the shit they do? Like, parents are always surprised by what their kids will do. They raise them from the time they are babies, spend each and every day with them, think they're these goddamn fucking angels, and then one day the cops come to the door and say hey, guess what parents? Your kid just bashed some other kid's head in with a baseball bat. Or you're the kid, and you think things are pretty fucking OK, and then one day this guy who's supposed to be your dad says so long, have a nice life. And you think, what the fuck is this? So years later, your mom ends up living with another guy, and he seems OK, but you think, when's it coming? That's what life is. Life is always asking yourself, when's it coming? Because if it hasn't come for a long time, you know you're fucking due. All the best, Anyone.”
― Linwood Barclay, quote from No Time for Goodbye
“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
“I'm not staring. I'm observing. . . . And what do you observe? . . . A brave young woman who has always fought for what was right, even when it was unpopular.”
― Michelle Moran, quote from Cleopatra's Daughter
“You give me a great desire to love.”
― Marguerite Duras, quote from Hiroshima Mon Amour
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.