“There are so many stories, she thinks, and most of them end up lost.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from River of Stars
“We are not gods. We make mistakes. We do not live very long.
Sometimes someone grinds ink, mixes it with water, arranges paper, takes up a brush to record our time, our days, and we are given another life in those words.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from River of Stars
“Some writers later, describing the events of that night and day, wrote that Wan'yen of the Altai had seen a spirit-dragon of the river and become afraid. Writers do that sort of thing. They like dragons in their tales.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from River of Stars
“Lazy poets try to elicit a reader's response with words designed to tug at the heart.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from River of Stars
“He wasn't a poet, not everyone is.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from River of Stars
“A writer’s brush is a warrior’s bow, the letters it shapes are arrows that must hit the mark on the page. The calligrapher is an archer, or a general on a battlefield. Someone wrote that long ago. She feels that way this morning. She is at war.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from River of Stars
“He didn't look back but he knew his wife and his brother's wife, all the women of the house, would be flying, as if into battle, to make East Slope as ready as it could ever be for what had arrived.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from River of Stars
“You're too clever to be a soldier." Then she shook her head. "Don't say it. I know. We need our soldiers to be clever. I do know."
"Thank you," he murmured. "You can do all of the conversation. Make it easier for me.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from River of Stars
“It had taken skill, tact, an ability to choose friends well, and a great deal of luck”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from River of Stars
“Ambitions and dreams put you at a drinking table with unexpected companions. Cups were filled and refilled, making you drunk with the illusion of changing the world.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from River of Stars
“You’d never killed anyone. Then you had.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from River of Stars
“I cannot speak for those who come after, or what the world will be. We are not made that way.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from River of Stars
“It is not easy, she thinks, to make your way in the world while insisting on a new path.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from River of Stars
“It was different, though, knowing something in your thoughts and then hearing it confirmed, made real, planted in the world like a tree”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from River of Stars
“Not every man or woman sailing down the river will be a figure of force or significance. Some are merely in the boat with all of us.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from River of Stars
“It had taken skill, tact, an ability to choose friends well, and a great deal of luck... Luck was always part of it, one way or another”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from River of Stars
“Lin Kuo himself would have said that his legacy was his daughter. Or no. He’d have believed that, but never voiced the thought, for fear of putting a burden of such weight upon her shoulders, which would be an improper thing to do to anyone, let alone a child so dearly loved from the beginning of her days to the end of his.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from River of Stars
Guy Gavriel Kay
Born place: in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Canada
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“I am going to pretend that all life is just a game which I must play as skilfully and fairly as I can. If I lose, I am going to shrug my shoulders and laugh—also if I win.”
― Jean Webster, quote from Daddy-Long-Legs
“Roman influence seeds itself, sprouting mighty oaks right through the modern forest of computers, digital disks, microviruses and space satellites.”
― Anne Rice, quote from Pandora
“A narrow pond would form in the orchard, water clear as air covering grass and black leaves and fallen branches, all around it black leaves and drenched grass and fallen branches, and on it, slight as an image in an eye, sky, clouds, trees, our hovering faces and our cold hands.”
― Marilynne Robinson, quote from Housekeeping
“But whether he was happy or not was hard to say. Probably he was neither, just as a plant is neither.”
― Nathanael West, quote from Miss Lonelyhearts / The Day of the Locust
“إننا نغفر ما نفهمه، نغفره دائماً تقريباً .”
― Mikhail Lermontov, quote from A Hero of Our Time
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The Woman in WhiteBookQuoters 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.
