“Television, I'm afraid, has isolated us more than race, class, or ethnicity.”
― Paul Fleischman, quote from Seedfolks
“You can't see Canada across Lake Erie, but you know it's there. It's the same with spring. You have to have faith, especially in Cleveland. Snow in April always breaks your heart.”
― Paul Fleischman, quote from Seedfolks
“the ancient Egyptians prescribed walking through a garden as a cure for the mad.”
― Paul Fleischman, quote from Seedfolks
“Why do I need TV when I have forty-eight apartment windows to watch across the vacant lot, and a sliver of Lake Erie? I've seen history out this window. So much. I was four when we moved here in 1919. The fruit-sellers' carts and coal wagons were pulled down the street by horses back then. I used to stand just here and watch the coal brought up by the handsome lad from Groza, the village my parents were born in. Gibb Street was mainly Rumanians back then. It was "Adio" - "Good-bye"- in all the shops when you left. Then the Rumanians started leaving. They weren't the first, or the last. This has always been a working-class neighborhood. It's like a cheap hotel - you stay until you've got enough money to leave.”
― Paul Fleischman, quote from Seedfolks
“There's plenty about my life I can't change. Can't bring the dead back to life on this earth. Can't make the world loving and kind. Can't change myself into a millionaire. But a patch of ground in this trashy lot -- I can change that. Can change it big. Better to put my time into that than moaning about the other all day.”
― Paul Fleischman, quote from Seedfolks
“The sidewalk was completely empty. It was Sunday, early April. An icy wind teetered trash cans and turned my cheeks to marble. In Vietnam we had no weather like that. Here in Cleveland people call it spring.”
― Paul Fleischman, quote from Seedfolks
“[Community gardens] were oases in the urban landscape of fear, places where people could safely offer trust, helpfulness, charity, without need of an earthquake or hurricane...Community gardens are places where people rediscover not only generosity, but the pleasure of coming together. I salute all those who give their time and talents to rebuilding that sense of belonging.”
― Paul Fleischman, quote from Seedfolks
“Professor Sengupta had the self-satisfied habit common to many academics of pretending an intellectual equality with his audience in order to happily demonstrate his own superiority.”
― Ben Elton, quote from Time and Time Again
“Our present state of self-confidence and poise is the result of what we have "experienced" rather than what we have learned intellectually.”
― quote from Psycho-Cybernetics
“There are a million reasons why I love you. A million reasons that all begin with the amazing woman you are and end with the type of man you make me want to be.”
― Natalie Ward, quote from Losing Me Finding You
“The Queue consists entirely of fragments of ochered’ dialogue, a linguistic vernacular anchored by the long-suffering word stoyat’ (to stand). You stood? Yes, stood. Three hours. Got damaged ones. Wrong size. Here’s what the line wasn’t: a gray inert nowhere. Imagine instead an all-Soviet public square, a hurly-burly where comrades traded gossip and insults, caught up with news left out of the newspapers, got into fistfights, or enacted comradely feats. In the thirties the NKVD had informers in queues to assess public moods, hurrying the intelligence straight to Stalin’s brooding desk. Lines shaped opinions and bred ad hoc communities: citizens from all walks of life standing, united by probably the only truly collective authentic Soviet emotions: yearning and discontent (not to forget the unifying hostility toward war veterans and pregnant women, honored comrades allowed to get goods without a wait).”
― Anya von Bremzen, quote from Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing
“ما هكذا فعل قائدنا أبو ركوة (الوليد بن هشام بن المغيرة) قبل ألف عام. فلما رأى الناس يؤمنون بأن الحاكم بأمر الله يحكم بأمر الله، لم يسقط في يده، ولم ينتظر أن يصبح الشعب مؤهلاً، بل أقنعهم بأنه ثائر عليه هو أيضاً، بأمر الله. فتلقب بالثائر بأمر الله على الحاكم بأمر الله. فحيد العزة بالعزة. والحاكم أظلم. فتبعه خلق كثير.”
― quote from The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist
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.