“Many people die of thirst but the Irish are born with one.”
― Spike Milligan, quote from Puckoon
“Contraceptives should be used on every conceivable occasion.”
― Spike Milligan, quote from Puckoon
“Life wasn't too bad. The trouble with Man was, even while he was having a good time, he didn't appreciate it. Why, thought Milligan, this very moment might be the happiest in me life. The very thought of it made him miserable.”
― Spike Milligan, quote from Puckoon
“Patience, thought Milligan, that word was invented by dull buggers who couldn't think quick enough.”
― Spike Milligan, quote from Puckoon
“Author? Author? Did you write these legs?'
'Yes."
'Well, I don't like dem. I don't like 'em at all at all. I could ha' writted better legs meself.”
― Spike Milligan, quote from Puckoon
“The width of neck and shoulder suggested a rugby player, the broken nose confirmed it. Which shows just how wrong you can be as he never played the game in his life.”
― Spike Milligan, quote from Puckoon
“Come, come, come? I'm not asking for hundreds of pounds, just a little to start with. Will someone say ten shillings?'
'I can say it, Father' said Milligan, 'but I haven't got it.'
'I've got it,' thought Dr Goldstein, 'but I'm not going to say it.”
― Spike Milligan, quote from Puckoon
“You've done what?"
"I know," he said. "You're impressed. You send me out for bread and I come back with a boy. Well, not literally. That would be weird. Even for me.”
― Derek Landy, quote from Kingdom of the Wicked
“[...] Lo cual no excluía que el Pabellón de Oro no tardase, tal vez, a verse reducido a cenizas por las bombas incendiarias.
Tal y como iban las cosas, EL PABELLÓN DE ORO MUY PRONTO NO SERÍA MÁS QUE UN MONTÓN DE CENIZAS: ESTO ERA SEGURO.
A partir del momento en que esta idea se instaló en mí, todo lo que había de trágico en la belleza del templo se acrecentó todavía más.”
― Yukio Mishima, quote from The Temple of the Golden Pavilion
“I feel only gratitude. We are doing something as necessary to our well-being as food or air or water. We are steeping ourselves, reassuring ourselves, renewing ourselves, three creatures of two species, finding comfort in the simple exchange of body warmth.”
― quote from A Three Dog Life
“It was a warship, after all. It was built, designed to glory in destruction, when it was considered appropriate. It found, as it was rightly and properly supposed to, an awful beauty in both the weaponry of war and the violence and devastation which that weaponry was capable of inflicting, and yet it knew that attractiveness stemmed from a kind of insecurity, a sort of childishness. It could see that—by some criteria—a warship, just by the perfectly articulated purity of its purpose, was the most beautiful single artifact the Culture was capable of producing, and at the same time understand the paucity of moral vision such a judgment implied. To fully appreciate the beauty of the weapon was to admit to a kind of shortsightedness close to blindness, to confess to a sort of stupidity. The weapon was not itself; nothing was solely itself. The weapon, like anything else, could only finally be judged by the effect it had on others, by the consequences it produced in some outside context, by its place in the rest of the universe. By this measure the love, or just the appreciation, of weapons was a kind of tragedy.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from Excession
“[The Void Which Binds] actual but unaccessible presence in our universe is one of the prime causes for our species elaborating myth and religion, for our stubborn, blind belief in extrasensory powers, in telepathy and precognition, in demons and demigods and resurrection and reincarnation and ghosts and messiahs and so many other categories of almost-but-not-quite satisfying bullshit.”
― Dan Simmons, quote from The Rise of Endymion
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.