“Even the most primite societies have an innate resepect for the insane.”
― S.E. Hinton, quote from Rumble Fish
“I made up my mind that I'd get out of that place and I did...I learned that if you want to get somewhere, you just make up your mind and work like hell til you get there. If you want to go somewhere in life, you just have to work till you make it.”
― S.E. Hinton, quote from Rumble Fish
“Your mother is not crazy. Neither, contrary to popular belief, is your brother. He is merely miscast in a play. He would have made the perfect knight in a different century, or a very good pagan prince in a time of heroes. He was born in the wrong era, on the wrong side of the river, with the ability to do anything and finding nothing he wants to do.”
― S.E. Hinton, quote from Rumble Fish
“California is like a beautiful wild kid on heroin, high as a kite and thinking she's on top of the world, not knowing she's dying, not believing it even if you show her the marks.”
― S.E. Hinton, quote from Rumble Fish
“Yeah," I said. "And I'm gonna look just like him."
The black cat paused and looked me over.
"No you ain't baby. That cat is a prince, man. He is royalty in exile. You ain't never gonna look like that.”
― S.E. Hinton, quote from Rumble Fish
“He had strange eyes-they make me think of a two-way mirror. Like you could feel somebody on the other side watching you, but the only reflections you saw was your own.”
― S.E. Hinton, quote from Rumble Fish
“I could never understand people being scared of things they didn't know nothing about.”
― S.E. Hinton, quote from Rumble Fish
“If you're going to lead people, you have to have somewhere to go.”
― S.E. Hinton, quote from Rumble Fish
“Holy fuck—would somebody please tell him why a massive photo of a penis was sitting front and center in the courtroom?”
― Julie James, quote from Practice Makes Perfect
“Theophilus Hopkins was a moderately famous man. You can look him up in the 1860 Britannica. There are three full columns about his corals and his corallines, his anemones and starfish. It does not have anything very useful about the man. It does not tell you what he was like. You can read it three times over and never guess that he had any particular attitude to Christmas pudding.”
― Peter Carey, quote from Oscar and Lucinda
“The young king, bright with such gold as is not found in any mine, strode across the waves; and the glory of him was such that he who looked on it should never look upon another.”
― Gene Wolfe, quote from The Urth of the New Sun
“Children, now we shall try to write a capital letter L,” I say and go to the blackboard. “Ten lines of L’s, then five lines of Lina, and five lines of Larch.” I write out the words slowly with chalk. A shuffling and rustling begins behind me. I expect to find that they are laughing at me and turn around. But it is only the notebooks being opened and the slates put in readiness. The forty heads are bent obediently over their task. —I am almost surprised. The slate pencils are squeaking, the pens scratching. I pass to and fro between the forms. On the wall hangs a crucifix, a stuffed barn owl and a map of Europe. Outside the windows the clouds drive steadily by, swift and low. The map of Germany is coloured in brown and green. I stop before it. The frontiers are hatched in red, and make a curious zigzag from top to bottom. Cologne—Aachen, there are the thin black lines marking the railways; Herbesthal, Liège, Brussels, Lille—I stand on tiptoe—Roubaix, Arras, Ostend—Where is Mount Kemmel then? It isn’t marked at all; but there is Langemarck, Ypres, Bixschoote, Staden. How small they are on the map—tiny points only, secluded, tiny points—and yet how the heavens thundered and the earth raged there on the 31st of July when the Big Offensive began and before nightfall we had lost every officer. I turn away and survey the fair and dark heads bending zealously over the words, Lina and Larch. Strange—for them those tiny points on the map will be no more than just so much stuff to be learned—a few new place names and a number of dates to be memorized by note in the history lesson—like the Seven Years’ War or some battle against the Romans. A”
― Erich Maria Remarque, quote from The Road Back
“...women are elephants and watch the way you say that in front of them because they'll think you're calling them fat and there's no coming back from that moment. But they hoard. They say they don't, but they do. We think that if something's not spoken about again, it goes away. It doesn't. Nothing goes away just like that...”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from The Piper's Son
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.