“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
“But chance runs like a river through all our lives, and being prepared for surprise is the best we can do.”
― Kenneth Oppel, quote from Skybreaker
“Some things you carry around inside you as though they were part of your blood and bones, and when that happens, there’s nothing you can do to forget
…But I had never been much of a believer. If anything, I believed that things got worse before they got better. I believed good people suffered... people who have faith were so lucky; you didn’t want to ruin it for them. You didn’t want to plant doubt where there was none. You had to treat suck individuals tenderly and hope that some of whatever they were feeling rubs off on you
Those who love you will love you forever, without questions or boundaries or the constraints of time. Daily life is real, unchanging as a well-built house. But houses burn; they catch fire in the middle of the night.
The night is like any other night of disaster, with every fact filtered through a veil of disbelief. The rational world has spun so completely out of its orbit, there is no way to chart or expect what might happen next
At that point, they were both convinced that love was a figment of other people’s imaginations, an illusion fashioned out of smoke and air that really didn’t exist
Fear, like heat, rises; it drifts up to the ceiling and when it falls down it pours out in a hot and horrible rain
True love, after all, could bind a man where he didn’t belong. It could wrap him in cords that were all but impossible to break
Fear is contagious. It doubles within minutes; it grows in places where there’s never been any doubt before
The past stays with a man, sticking to his heels like glue, invisible and heartbreaking and unavoidable, threaded to the future, just as surely as day is sewn to night
He looked at girls and saw only sweet little fuckboxes, there for him to use, no hearts involved, no souls, and, most assuredly no responsibilities.
Welcome to the real world. Herein is the place where no one can tell you whether or not you’ve done the right thing.
I could tell people anything I wanted to, and whatever I told them, that would be the truth as far as they were concerned. Whoever I said I was, well then, that’s who id be
The truths by which she has lived her life have evaporated, leaving her empty of everything except the faint blue static of her own skepticism. She has never been a person to question herself; now she questions everything
Something’s, are true no matter how hard you might try to bloc them out, and a lie is always a lie, no matter how prettily told
You were nothing more than a speck of dust, good-looking dust, but dust all the same
Some people needed saving
She doesn’t want to waste precious time with something as prosaic as sleep. Every second is a second that belongs to her; one she understands could well be her last
Why wait for anything when the world is so cockeyed and dangerous? Why sit and stare into the mirror, too fearful of what may come to pass to make a move?
At last she knows how it feels to take a chance when everything in the world is at stake, breathless and heedless and desperate for more
She’ll be imagining everything that’s out in front of them, road and cloud and sky, all the elements of a future, the sort you have to put together by hand, slowly and carefully until the world is yours once more”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Blue Diary
“This violent state of mind.
This violent state of mine.”
― Don Winslow, quote from Savages
“Em didn't truly understand about my panic attacks - no one did. But she'd never pushed me to explain, never tried to ditch me when things got weird, and never once looked at me like I was a freak.”
― Rachel Vincent, quote from My Soul to Lose
“A man comes walking north. He carries a sack, the first sack, containing provisions for the road and some implements. The man is strong and rough-hewn, with a red lion beard and little scars on face and hands, sites of old wounds--were they gotten at work or in a fight? Maybe he has been in jail and wants to go into hiding, or perhaps he is a philosopher looking for peace; in any case, here he comes, a human being in the midst of this immense solitude. He walks and walks, in a silence broken by neither bird nor beast.”
― Knut Hamsun, quote from Growth of the Soil
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.