“If you let people believe that you are weak, sooner or later you’re going to have to kill them.”
― Don Winslow, quote from Savages
“Also: do not fuck with someone until you know exactly who the fuck you're fucking with.
And then don't do it.”
― Don Winslow, quote from Savages
“I don't recognize myself. I don't know who I am anymore."
And it's all fun and games until someone loses an I.”
― Don Winslow, quote from Savages
“And it's all fun and games until someone loses an I.”
― Don Winslow, quote from Savages
“Your strengths are your weaknesses.
The more you try to protect something, the more vulnerable you make it.”
― Don Winslow, quote from Savages
“She's also ruthless - it's love me or off with your head. She's the Red Queen”
― Don Winslow, quote from Savages
“Just a short while ago the Republicans were objects of fear and hatred—now they’re just pathetic assholes. Barry took them to the paint and cut their throats. (O-BAM-a!) Now they walk around like white frat boys in Bed-Stuy, talking tough to show they aren’t scared as the urine streams down their chinos into their cordovans. Obama has these dweebs so turned around all they can do is get behind some fat junkie DJ, a gibberish-spewing PsychoBimbette from the Far North, and a tele-dork who gives adrenaline-crazed, 1950s-style “chalk talks” (speaking of little white dicks) like some health-class instructor in a sex-offender unit.”
― Don Winslow, quote from Savages
“We proclaimed the freedom of the individual, bought and drove millions of cars to prove it, built more roads for the cars to drive on so we could go the everywhere that was nowhere. We watered our lawns, we washed our cars, we gulped plastic bottles of water to stay hydrated in our dehydrated land, we put up water parks.
We built temples to our fantasies--film studios, amusement parks, crystal cathedrals, megachurches--and flocked to them.
We went to the beach, rode the waves, and poured our waste into the water we said we loved.
We reinvented ourselves every day, remade our culture, locked ourselves in gated communities, we ate healthy food, we gave up smoking, we lifted our faces while avoiding the sun, we had our skin peeled, our lines removed, our fat sucked away like our unwanted babies, we defied aging and death.
We made gods of wealth and health.
A religion of narcissism.
In the end, we worshipped only ourselves.
In the end, it wasn't enough.”
― Don Winslow, quote from Savages
“This violent state of mind.
This violent state of mine.”
― Don Winslow, quote from Savages
“The bozo who’s going to go early John Woo all over the manicured lawns and flower beds just to show he doesn’t give a fuck about convention.”
― Don Winslow, quote from Savages
“A lot of existential questions will be answered just after the “Fuck.” As in life itself.”
― Don Winslow, quote from Savages
“Dope is supposed to be bad, but in a bad world it’s good”
― Don Winslow, quote from Savages
“I'm not the cruel type, but they are, and that's the secret.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Tales of Ordinary Madness
“Oh! Science! Everything has been revised. For the body and for the soul,--the viaticum,—there are medicine and philosophy,—old wives' remedies and popular songs rearranged. And the pastimes of princes and games they proscribed! Geography, cosmography, mechanics, chemistry!...
Science, the new nobility! Progress. The world marches on! Why shouldn’t it turn?
It is the vision of numbers. We are going toward the Spirit. There’s no doubt about it, an oracle, I tell you. I understand, and not knowing how to express myself without pagan words, I’d rather remain silent.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat
“British Columbia has been described as a banana republic, only with bigger bananas,”
― John Vaillant, quote from The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
“He thought of these things. Harry must have changed since then, become obnoxious or something. Julian reasoned that he could not have asked the Harry he now knew to invest so much money in the business. Well, maybe the winter had something to do with it. You went to the Gibbsville Club for lunch; Harry was there. You went to the country club to play squash on Whit Hofman's private court, and Harry was around. You went to the Saturday night drinking parties, and there was Harry; inescapable, everywhere. Carter Davis was there, too, and so was Whit; so was Froggy Ogden. But they were different. The bad new never had worn off Harry Reilly. And the late fall and winter seemed now to have been spoiled by room after room with Harry Reilly. You could walk outside in the summer, but even though you can walk outside in winter, winter isn't that way. You have to go back to the room soon, and there is no life in the winter outside of rooms. Not in Gibbsville, which was a pretty small room itself.”
― John O'Hara, quote from Appointment in Samarra
“Yet I’ve noticed the same thing when your band plays — the most amazing social coherence, as if you all shared the same brain."
"Sure," agreed ‘Dope’, "but you can’t call that organization."
"What do you call it?"
"Jass.”
― Thomas Pynchon, quote from Against the Day
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.