“We're all just in the muck trying to believe we're capable of greatness, but closer to breaking than we want to admit. And we tell ourselves stories--about ourselves,but maybe also all these stories about other people, about characters--as a way to hide from how small we are.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“It's what happens. You love, then you lose, then you die. Even if you survive, you die.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“It's not a bad way to live once you let go of the idea that you deserve more.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“What begins at the water shall end there, and what ends there shall once more begin.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“-It's extremely cool how the words can stay the same but their meaning can change.
-Because the reader changes.
-EXACTLY”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“Do you always travel with such cumbersome books?" "I don't trust anyone who wouldn't.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“- I can't make choices like that without knowing who I am. Without knowing all the implications.
- You can't ever know in advance. Big decisions require faith.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“A person is no more & no less than the Story of his Passions & Deeds.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“They're not terrible people. They just couldn't be who I needed them to be.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“It was stolen. As most beautiful things eventually are.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“They all occupied the same space but did not occupy it together. Imagine a thousand leaves of tracing paper, each with one person lightly pencilled on it, all stacked atop a scene of a frozen city block. A thousand discreet and solitary realities that appear to be occurring in the same location.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“He is a man without a past sailing in a strange sea in a world where the stars have come loose in the firmament.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“-I hate that. I hate that people can't just say what they mean.
-You don't. Not always.
-I never say anything I don't mean. I just avoid saying some things that I do.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“The thing is: you might be right to trust someone at one point, but they can change."
"+ in between they must be drifting from trustworthy to not. But you can't tell how far they've drifted until it's too late.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“For one moment, it is more important to take in the spectacular than to worry about the pressing business of staying alive.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“I think it's love.'
'Funny.'
'I'm serious.'
'And your support for this is...?'
'A feeling.'
'You need more than that.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“What begins at the water shall end there, and what ends there shall once more begin. Words are a gift to the dead and a warning to the living.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“There's a spiritual connection between flame and narrative.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“This is what happens, of course: men get lost, men vanish, men are erased and reborn.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“Time and circumstances change us...and it is pointless to ask why.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“Something about her in this moment strikes him as being familiar. The motion of her arm? The shape of her hand? The wrinkle of her upper lip? He does not know. Nor does he have any way to tell whether what he is sensing is a fragment of memory, a fragment of an idea of a memory, or something his mind, desperate for connections, has created on its own.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“To be a self rewritten from a lost first draft.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“Of course there is a monkey. There is always a monkey.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“-That's kind of sad.
-I used to think so. Now I think: you're born a certain way. Later you get to decide how much you want to fight/change that. I don't mind being alone.
-You must mind. If you didn't you wouldn't be doing this with me.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“This is where his life - his remade life - has brought him. Each strange juncture has led to the next and now he is here. He is here, and it is nowhere.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“They speak little; it is as if the air has been churned up with decade's worth of fruitless pursuit and missed connections and thoughts unspoken, and they are waiting quietly for all this matter — these motes of opportunity forgone — to settle around them.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“The feeling, for those seconds, is glorious—it reminds him that he is human, that he is so insignificant as to be utterly free, and he is being guided along gracefully, lovingly, by the hand of Nature—and it frees him, however transiently, from all worry and fear and fury and grief. 'I enjoyed that,' he says aloud, as much to the stars as to the rower.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“Do you always travel with such cumbersome books?'
'I don't trust anyone who wouldn't.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“If I am going out into the unknown, it might as well be the really unknown.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“When you fall in love, friends, let yourself fall.”
― J.J. Abrams, quote from S.
“The truth gets uglier the longer you try to hold it down.”
― Lara Adrian, quote from Shades of Midnight
“INEZ: To forget about the others? How utterly absurd! I feel you there, in every pore.Your silence clamours in my ears. You can nail up your mouth, cut your tongue out - but you can't prevent your being there. Can you stop your thoughts? I hear them ticking away like a clock, tick-tock, tick-tock, and I'm certain you hear mine. It's all very well skulking on your sofa, but you're everywhere, and every sound comes to me soiled because you've intercepted it on its way. Why, you've even stolen my face; you know it and I don't ! And what about her, about Estelle? You've stolen her from me, too; if she and I were alone do you suppose she'd treat me as she does? No, take your hands from your face, I won't leave you in peace - that would suit your book too well. You'd go on sitting there, in a sort of trance, like a yogi, and even if I didn't see her I'd feel it in my bones - that she was making every sound, even the rustle of her dress, for your benefit, throwing you smiles you didn't see... Well, I won't stand for that, I prefer to choose my hell; I prefer to look you in the eyes and fight it out face to face.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from No Exit
“People say there are thousands of options we have in life. I say we have only two: we can either be happy or be unhappy.”
― Pawan Mishra, quote from Coinman: An Untold Conspiracy
“I told you, in my last, that He sometimes permits bodily diseases to cure the distempers of the soul. Have courage then: make a virtue of necessity: ask of GOD, not deliverance from your pains, but strength to bear resolutely, for the love of Him, all that He should please, and as long as He shall please.”
― Brother Lawrence, quote from The Practice of the Presence of God
“And the truth is, I’d felt kind of a thrill about wearing Jason’s Big Boy pants. I was a sick kid, even way back then.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from How to Be Popular
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.