“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.
J.J. Abrams
Born place: in New York, New York, The United States
Born date June 27, 1966
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“End of Winter”
Over the still world, a bird calls
waking solitary among black boughs.
You wanted to be born; I let you be born.
When has my grief ever gotten
in the way of your pleasure?
Plunging ahead
into the dark and light at the same time
eager for sensation
as though you were some new thing, wanting
to express yourselves
all brilliance, all vivacity
never thinking
this would cost you anything,
never imagining the sound of my voice
as anything but part of you—
you won’t hear it in the other world,
not clearly again,
not in birdcall or human cry,
not the clear sound, only
persistent echoing
in all sound that means good-bye, good-bye—
the one continuous line
that binds us to each other.”
― Louise Glück, quote from The Wild Iris
“Introducing change is like pulling off a bandage : the pain is a memory as soon as you feel it.”
― Paul Graham, quote from Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
“One of the greatest gifts we receive from dogs is the tenderness they evoke in us. The disappointments of life, the injustices, the battering events that are beyond our control, and the betrayals we endure, from those we befriended and loved, can make us cynical and turn our hearts into flint – on which only the matches of anger and bitterness can be struck into flame. By their delight in being with us, the reliable sunniness of their disposition, the joy they bring to playtime, the curiosity with which they embrace each new experience, dogs can melt cynicism,and sweeten the bitter heart.”
― Dean Koontz, quote from A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog
“Places, like people, have their beginnings and have also their endings.”
― Walter Van Tilburg Clark, quote from The City Of Trembling Leaves
“Gloire de Dijon
When she rises in the morning
I linger to watch her;
She spreads the bath-cloth underneath the window
And the sunbeams catch her
Glistening white on the shoulders,
While down her sides the mellow
Golden shadow glows as
She stoops to the sponge, and her swung breasts
Sway like full-blown yellow
Gloire de Dijon roses.
She drips herself with water, and her shoulders
Glisten as silver, they crumple up
Like wet and falling roses, and I listen
For the sluicing of their rain-dishevelled petals.
In the window full of sunlight
Concentrates her golden shadow
Fold on fold, until it glows as
Mellow as the glory roses.”
― D.H. Lawrence, quote from The Complete Poems (Poetry Library)
Point of Retreat
Evernight
The Iron Queen
The Runaway Jury
On Dublin Street
Sometimes a Great No...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.
