“The coma ward was boring yet difficult. Like golf.”
― Belinda Bauer, quote from Rubbernecker
“Everybody else possessed the key to popularity and happiness, and his clumsy attempts to find his own key always ended with other children looking at him funny, or calling him names.”
― Belinda Bauer, quote from Rubbernecker
“Sweet little thing says she still wants to marry him. Breaks your heart: She sighed and sounded sincere, so Tracy nodded in a way she hoped denoted that she, too, was a little bit heartbroken — even though she thought that if her (hypothetical) boyfriend were in a coma for more than a few weeks, she’d probably just cut her losses and move on, not stick around to watch him shit in his pants for the next fifty years.”
― Belinda Bauer, quote from Rubbernecker
“It has sick on the sleeve. And no apostrophe.”
― Belinda Bauer, quote from Rubbernecker
“There are worse things than dying."
"Really?" said Meg.
"Of course," said the tech. "Living badly.”
― Belinda Bauer, quote from Rubbernecker
“You're different, you know."
"Only different from you," he said. "Not different from me.”
― Belinda Bauer, quote from Rubbernecker
Belinda Bauer
Born place: in The United Kingdom
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“But this road, this road that I have walked, you, too, must walk, Sarillorn or no.”
“What road, Lady?”
“The road between Dark and Light. And you, of the Light, must take that path, knowing that light casts its shadows, and that they lie at times in places that no eyes can see.”
― Michelle Sagara West, quote from Into the Dark Lands
“Evolution has taught them that pointless harm will ultimately harm themselves.”
― Carl Zimmer, quote from Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures
“I have heard people suggest that because humans are natural that everything humans do or create is natural. Chainsaws are natural. Nuclear bombs are natural. Our economics is natural. Sex slavery is natural. Asphalt is natural. Cars are natural. Polluted water is natural. A devastated world is natural. A devasted phyche is natural. Unbridled exploitation is natural. Pure objectification is natural. This is, of course, nonsense. We are embedded in the natural world. We evolved as social creatures in this natural world. We require clean water to drink, or we die. We require clean air to breathe, or we die. We require food, or we die. We require love, affection, social contact in order to become our full selves. It is part of our evolutionary legacy as social creatures. Anything that helps us to understand all of this is natural: Any ritual, artifact, process, action is natural, to the degree that it reinforces our understanding of our embeddedness in the natural world, and any ritual, artifact, process, action is unnatural, to the degree that it does not”
― Derrick Jensen, quote from The Culture of Make Believe
“The argument has long been made that we humans are by nature compassionate and empathic despite the occasional streak of meanness, but torrents of bad news throughout history have contradicted that claim, and little sound science has backed it. But try this thought experiment. Imagine the number of opportunities people around the world today might have to commit an antisocial act, from rape or murder to simple rudeness and dishonesty. Make that number the bottom of a fraction. Now for the top value you put the number of such antisocial acts that will actually occur today.
That ratio of potential to enacted meanness holds at close to zero any day of the year. And if for the top value you put the number of benevolent acts performed in a given day, the ratio of kindness to cruelty will always be positive. (The news, however, comes to us as though that ratio was reversed.)
Harvard's Jerome Kagan proposes this mental exercise to make a simple point about human nature: the sum total of goodness vastly outweighs that of meanness. 'Although humans inherit a biological bias that permits them to feel anger, jealousy, selfishness and envy, and to be rude, aggressive or violent,' Kagan notes, 'they inherit an even stronger biological bias for kindness, compassion, cooperation, love and nurture – especially toward those in need.' This inbuilt ethical sense, he adds, 'is a biological feature of our species.”
― Daniel Goleman, quote from Social Intelligence: The New Science of Human Relationships
“The sea was surging among the pilings like the blithe mindless forces of dissolution.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Chill
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My Name Is Asher LevBookQuoters 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.
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