“People have wanted to narrate since first we banged rocks together & wondered about fire. There’ll be tellings as long as there are any of us here, until the stars disappear one by one like turned-out lights.”
― China Miéville, quote from Railsea
“Technically, our name, to those who speak science, is Homo sapiens— wise person. But we have been described in many other ways. Homo narrans, juridicus, ludens, diaspora: we are storytelling, legal, game-playing, scattered people, too. True but incomplete. That old phrase has the secret. We are all, have always been, will always be, Homo vorago aperientis: person before whom opens a vast & awesome hole.”
― China Miéville, quote from Railsea
“Do please,” said Captain Naphi, “expedite this journey relevance-ward.”
― China Miéville, quote from Railsea
“Heaven might not be what everyone thinks it is, but that don’t mean it’s a myth.”
― China Miéville, quote from Railsea
“Humans like nothing more than to pigeonhole the events & phenomena that punctuate their lives.”
― China Miéville, quote from Railsea
“There were times, Sham felt, when the captains regretted there being only two types of limb they could lose to their obsessions.”
― China Miéville, quote from Railsea
“There was a time when wen we did not form all our words as we do now, in writing on a page. There was a time when the word "&" was written with several distinct & separate letters. It seems madness now. But there it is, & there is nothing we can do about it.
Humanity learned to ride the rails, & that motion made us what we are, a ferromaritime people. The lines of the railsea go everywhere but from one place straight to another. It is always switchback, junction, coils around & over our own train-trails.
What word better could there be to symbolize the railsea that connects & separates all lands, than “&” itself? Where else does the railsea take us, but to one place & that one & that one & that one, & so on? & what better embodies, in the sweep of the pen, the recurved motion of trains, than “&”?
An efficient route from where we start to where we end would make the word the tiniest line. But it takes a veering route, up & backwards, overshooting & correcting, back down again south & west, crossing its own earlier path, changing direction, another overlap, to stop, finally, a few hairs’ width from where we began.
& tacks & yaws, switches on its way to where it’s going, as we all must do.”
― China Miéville, quote from Railsea
“History seemed meaningless here, or at least bewildered.”
― China Miéville, quote from Railsea
“Standing there on his new perch, Sham was overwhelmingly bored of feeling overwhelmed. The more he worked, he realized, the quicker he worked.”
― China Miéville, quote from Railsea
China Miéville
Born place: in Norwich, England, The United Kingdom
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“It is the nature of an hypothesis, when once a man has conceived it, that it assimulates every thing to itself as proper nourishment; and, from the first moment of your begetting it, it generally grows the stronger by every thing you see, hear, read, or understand.”
― Laurence Sterne, quote from The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman
“A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from The Winter of Our Discontent
“Someone once asked Dad: “But what do you want to save time for? What are you going to do with it?” “For work, if you love that best,” said Dad. “For education, for beauty, for art, for pleasure.” He looked over the top of his pince-nez. “For mumblety-peg, if that's where your heart lies.”
― Frank B. Gilbreth Jr., quote from Cheaper by the Dozen
“The moment we stepped out into the hall, Cam's apartment door flung open. Ollie appeared, a cellphone in one hand and Raphael wiggling in the other. "Smile!" he shouted as he snapped a picture on his phone. "It's like my two kids are going to prom.”
― J. Lynn, quote from Wait for You
“Love is only found in books”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Burned
Truthwitch
Life is Elsewhere
High-Rise
Torrent
The Nightingale and...
The Half BrotherBookQuoters 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.
