“Anyone who hasn't experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing of ecstasy at all.”
― Jean Genet, quote from Prisoner of Love
“The hour between dog and wolf, that is, dusk, when the two can’t be distinguished from each other, suggests a lot of other things besides the time of day…The hour in which…every being becomes his own shadow, and thus something other than himself. The hour of metamorphoses, when people half hope, half fear that a dog will become a wolf. The hour that comes down to us from at least as far back as the early Middle Ages, when country people believed that transformation might happen at any moment.”
― Jean Genet, quote from Prisoner of Love
“إن العالم العربي، الذي ترونه من باريس، لم يبق منذ عهد محمد علي في مصر محنيا ولا جامدا. لقد انتفض محمد علي ضد الامبراطورية العثمانية والانجليز، تلته انتفاضة دروز سوريا في 1925، التي سحقها جنرالكم غورو، فحرب الجزائر، فالأنتفاضة المغربية وانتفاضة التونسيين التي أجلت كلأ من الفرنسيين والطليان الذين كانوا يتقاسمون خارطة الأمطار الشهيرة، فنهوض الجنرال قاسم بوجه الإنجليز في وشركة نفط العراق في 1958، ولم يدع عبد الناصر ولا حتى القذافي المملكة السنوسية سالمة. إن عالمنا كله انتفض ليتخلص من قمله، لكن لا رحب ولا فعل كان لهما مدى الثورة الفلسطينية”
― Jean Genet, quote from Prisoner of Love
“Anyone who has not experienced the ecstasy of betrayal knows nothing about ecstasy at all.”
― Jean Genet, quote from Prisoner of Love
“We are the ink that gives the white page a meaning.”
― Jean Genet, quote from Prisoner of Love
“When a man invents an image that he wants to propagate, that he may even want to substitute for himself, he starts by experimenting, making mistakes, sketching out freaks and other non-viable monsters that he has to tear up unless they disintegrate of their own accord. But the operative image is the one that's left after the person dies or withdraws from the world, as in the case of Socrates, Christ, Saladin, Saint-Just and so on. They succeeded in projecting an image around themselves and into the future. It doesn't matter whether or not the image corresponds to what they were really like: they managed to wrest a powerful image from that reality.”
― Jean Genet, quote from Prisoner of Love
“For the Vanderbilts lived in a day when flaunting one’s money was not only accepted but celebrated. What may have started as playacting, as dressing up as dukes and princesses for fancy dress balls in fairytale palaces, soon developed into a firm conviction that they were indeed the new American nobility.”
― quote from Fortune's Children: The Fall of the House of Vanderbilt
“People lived their lives, carelessly dropping information as if it were trash. The writer moved behind them like a ragpicker. She cleaned and separated their garbage, culled and collected it.”
― Nell Freudenberger, quote from The Dissident
“Forget the National Debt Clock. We need an electronic billboard to track all the daily shootings in this country. I'm really sick of listening to all the mouth breathers who soil their camouflage pants every time someone suggests we might have a gun problem. Other countries have crazy, violent people. What they don't have is 300,000,000 WMDs and a gun show loophole that allows any psycho with a valid credit card to own 'em.”
― Quentin R. Bufogle, quote from Horse Latitudes
“There's no one more obnoxious and self-righteous than the self-made man. And no one more admirable.”
― Joe R. Lansdale, quote from Mucho Mojo
“There is something electrifying about individuals with adventuresome spirits. They see life through a different lens. They almost emit electricity because nothing about them is dull or uninteresting or unplugged.”
― quote from I Married Adventure
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.