“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.”
“It's what happens. You love, then you lose, then you die. Even if you survive, you die.”
“It's not a bad way to live once you let go of the idea that you deserve more.”
“What begins at the water shall end there, and what ends there shall once more begin.”
“-It's extremely cool how the words can stay the same but their meaning can change.
-Because the reader changes.
-EXACTLY”
“Do you always travel with such cumbersome books?" "I don't trust anyone who wouldn't.”
“- 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.”
“A person is no more & no less than the Story of his Passions & Deeds.”
“They're not terrible people. They just couldn't be who I needed them to be.”
“It was stolen. As most beautiful things eventually are.”
“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.”
“He is a man without a past sailing in a strange sea in a world where the stars have come loose in the firmament.”
“-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.”
“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.”
“For one moment, it is more important to take in the spectacular than to worry about the pressing business of staying alive.”
“I think it's love.'
'Funny.'
'I'm serious.'
'And your support for this is...?'
'A feeling.'
'You need more than that.”
“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.”
“There's a spiritual connection between flame and narrative.”
“This is what happens, of course: men get lost, men vanish, men are erased and reborn.”
“Time and circumstances change us...and it is pointless to ask why.”
“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.”
“To be a self rewritten from a lost first draft.”
“Of course there is a monkey. There is always a monkey.”
“-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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Do you always travel with such cumbersome books?'
'I don't trust anyone who wouldn't.”
“If I am going out into the unknown, it might as well be the really unknown.”
“When you fall in love, friends, let yourself fall.”
“might almost be termed personalities, "may not be familiar to a couple of dud acrobats”
“Oh, you men,’ said Philippa. ‘You don’t understand anything. How can you show off your dress or your figure if you’re hiding behind a table in the gloom and smoke?”
“Questa è la fattoria Hale.
Ecco la vecchia stalla per la mungitura, l’entrata buia che dice Vieni a cercarmi.
Ecco la banderuola, la catasta di legna.
Ecco la casa, echeggiante di storie.
È presto. Il falco vola lento nel cielo sgombro. Una sottile piuma blu volteggia nel vuoto. L’aria è fredda, limpida. La casa è silenziosa, come la cucina, il divano di velluto blu, la piccola tazza da tè bianca.
Da sempre la fattoria canta per noi, le sue famiglie perdute, i suoi soldati e le mogli. Durante la guerra, quando arrivarono con le baionette, entrando con la forza, gli stivali infangati sulle scale. Patrioti. Banditi. Mariti. Padri. Dormivano nei letti freddi. Razziavano la cantina in cerca di barattoli di pesche sciroppate e barbabietole da zucchero. Accendevano grandi fuochi nel campo, e le fiamme si contorcevano, schioccando alte verso il cielo. Fuochi che ridevano. Le facce calde brillavano e le mani erano in tasca, al riparo. Arrostivano un maiale e strappavano la carne dolce e rosea dall’osso. Dopo, si succhiavano via il grasso dalle dita, un sapore familiare, strano.
Ce ne sono stati altri – molti – che hanno rubato, smantellato e saccheggiato. Perfino i tubi di rame, perfino le mattonelle di ceramica. Quello che potevano prendere, prendevano. Hanno lasciato solo i muri, i pavimenti spogli. Il cuore pulsante in cantina.
Noi aspettiamo. Siamo pazienti. Aspettiamo notizie. Aspettiamo che ci venga detto qualcosa. Il vento sta provando a farlo. Gli alberi ondeggiano. È la fine di qualcosa; lo sentiamo. Presto sapremo.”
“One of my greatest lessons has been to fully understand that what looks like a dark patch in the quest for success is the universe pointing you in a new direction. Anything can be a miracle, a blessing, an opportunity if you choose to see it that way.”
“Things do not always work out as we have planned, do they? Sometimes the hardest thing is not to just survive the grief, but to step around it and move on. It helps if your suitcases are not so full.”
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.