Quotes from Selected Letters

“I know enough to know that no woman should ever marry a man who hated his mother.”
― Martha Gellhorn, quote from Selected Letters

“Citizenship is a tough occupation which obliges the citizen to make his own informed opinion and stand by it”
― Martha Gellhorn, quote from Selected Letters

“And this urge to run away from what I love is a sort of sadism I no longer pretend to understand.”
― Martha Gellhorn, quote from Selected Letters

“It is much harder to be lonely, when you have for a while stopped being lonely. I was used to having only myself, cold and hard as that is; I could live with it. And now I wait, for a voice, a face, a body, that is not going to be here, is not mine, does not in any case wait as I do, nor share this homesickness. […] How to explain that I taught myself to be tough and indifferent, because it mattered too much and learned not even to weep in my mind not to notice.”
― Martha Gellhorn, quote from Selected Letters

“I love you. Have a hell of a good time. I don’t really know what else is worth having.”
― Martha Gellhorn, quote from Selected Letters

“People do not yet realize (because the mind isn't built that way) what war can be. They fear it but surely they fear it the way children fear nightmares, dimly, without definite images in their heads of how it will all work out.”
― Martha Gellhorn, quote from Selected Letters

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Popular quotes

“Going to university is only one avenue to gain knowledge. There are others. A degree isn't insurance against ignorance.”
― Julie Garwood, quote from For the Roses

“no one knew what was going on! It was completely open to interpretation. And his guess was as good as anyone’s. My God, probably even better.”
― Michael E. Gerber, quote from The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It

“I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. ... What you know about computing other people will learn. Don’t feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What’s in your hands I think and hope is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more.”
― Harold Abelson, quote from Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (MIT Electrical Engineering and Computer Science)

“Perhaps animals are smarter than men, he thought, taking only what they need to live today leaving something for tomorrow.”
― Patrick D. Smith, quote from A Land Remembered

“Sometimes people can learn a lot about each other just by sitting in silence.”
― Louis Sachar, quote from There's a Boy in the Girls' Bathroom

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

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.