“Looks like what drives me crazy
Don't have no effect on you--
But I'm gonna keep on at it
Till it drives you crazy, too.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from Selected Poems
“Out of love,
No regrets--
Though the goodness
Be wasted forever.
Out of love,
No regrets--
Though the return
Be never.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from Selected Poems
“The sea is a desert of waves,
A wilderness of water.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from Selected Poems
“I will take your heart.
I will take your soul out of your body
As though I were God.
I will not be satisfied
With the little words you say to me.
I will not be satisfied
With the touch of your hand
Nor the sweet of your lips alone.
I will take your heart for mine.
I will take your soul.
I will be God when it comes to you.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from Selected Poems
“The speaker catches fire
looking at their faces.
His words
jump down to stand
in listener's places.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from Selected Poems
“Joe has sense enough to know
He is a god.
So many gods don't know.”
― Langston Hughes, quote from Selected Poems
“I can’t spend my whole life just sitting on my hands and wondering when I’m going to fade. I can’t. That’s worse than doing something wrong. Isn’t it?”
― Stephen R. Donaldson, quote from The Mirror of Her Dreams
“يجب ألا يشعر أحد بأنه مهدد أو محتقر أو مستبعد أو «ملعون» لدرجة أن يكون مضطراً لأن يواري بخجل ديانته أو لونه أو لغته أو اسمه أو أي عنصر مكوّن لهويته، لكي يتمكن من العيش وسط الآخرين. كل فرد يجب أن يكون قادراً على الاضطلاع بكل انتماء من انتماءاته و رأسه مرفوع و دون خوف و ضغينة.”
― Amin Maalouf, quote from In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong
“We often told ourselves off for wasting time in chairs, fully dressed, talking, when we could be doing the same, lying down in bed, face to face and naked. That precious time before love-making is ill-served by the pseudo-clinical term, ‘foreplay’. The world would narrow and deepen, our voices would sink into the warmth of our bodies, the conversation became associative and unpredictable. Everything was touch and breath. Certain simple phrases came to me which I didn’t say out loud because they sounded so banal - Here we are, or, This again or Yes, this. Like a moment in a recurring dream, these spacious, innocent minutes were forgotten until we were back inside them. When we were, our lives returned to the essentials and began again. When we fell silent, we would lie so close we were mouth to mouth, delaying the union which bound us all the more because of this prelude.”
― Ian McEwan, quote from Enduring Love
“...and into this bizarrerie, as into all his others, I quietly fell; giving myself up to his wild whims with a perfect abandon.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales
“Reckon it's best if you don't have anyone you care about; then it can't hurt you. Don't have to be afraid of losing someone if you no one to lose.”
― Karen Maitland, quote from Company of Liars
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.