“Do you know a cure for me?"
"Why yes," he said, "I know a cure for everything. Salt water."
"Salt water?" I asked him.
"Yes," he said, "in one way or the other. Sweat, or tears, or the salt sea.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“The real difference between God and human beings, he thought, was that God cannot stand continuance. No sooner has he created a season of a year, or a time of the day, than he wishes for something quite different, and sweeps it all away. No sooner was one a young man, and happy at that, than the nature of things would rush one into marriage, martyrdom or old age. And human beings cleave to the existing state of things. All their lives they are striving to hold the moment fast....Their art itself is nothing but the attempt to catch by all means the one particular moment, one light, the momentary beauty of one woman or one flower, and make it everlasting.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“For really, dreaming is the well-mannered people's way of committing suicide.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“Where, My Lord, is music bred—upon the instrument or within the ear that listens? The loveliness of woman is created in the eye of man.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“She had what the Councillor knew, in the technical language of the ballet, as "ballon", a lightness that is not only the negation of weight, but which actually seems to carry upwards and make for flight, and which is rarely found in thin dancers - as if the matter itself had here become lighter than air, so that the more there is of it the better it works.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“Perhaps to them the first condition for anything having real charm was this: that it must not really exist.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“Truth, like time, is an idea arising from, and dependent upon, human intercourse.”
― Isak Dinesen, quote from Seven Gothic Tales
“Kad sam bio dijete, nadao sam se da ću kad odrastem postati knjiga. Ne književnik, nego knjiga. Ljude se može pobiti kao mrave, pa ni književnike nije teško ubiti. Ali za knjigu, čak i ako je sustavno unište, postoji šansa da se neki primjerak spasio i da će nastaviti živjeti na polici, živjeti nijemim životom na nekoj od zaboravljenih polica u nekoj zabačenoj knjižnici, u Rejkjaviku, Valladolidu ili Vancouveru.”
― Amos Oz, quote from A Tale of Love and Darkness
“We are not gods. We make mistakes. We do not live very long.
Sometimes someone grinds ink, mixes it with water, arranges paper, takes up a brush to record our time, our days, and we are given another life in those words.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from River of Stars
“There is no such thing as a plain fact of murder. Murder springs, nine times out of ten, out of the character and circumstances of the murdered person. Because the victim was the kind of person he or she was, therefore was he or she murdered! Until we can understand fully and completely exactly what kind of a person [she] was, we shall not be able to see clearly exactly the kind of person who murdered her. From that spring the necessity of our questions.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from Evil Under the Sun
“Black: If this aint the life you had in mind, what was?
White: I dont know. Not this. Is your life the one you'd planned?
Black: No, it aint. I got what I needed instead of what I wanted and that's just about the best kind of luck you can have.”
― Cormac McCarthy, quote from The Sunset Limited
“By doing research - whether in written sources such as books, magazines, or newspapers or through personal interviews - you acquire information. The information you collect allows you to operate from the position of choice, confidence, and responsibility. You can choose to use some, or all, or none of the material you've gathered; that's your choice, dictated by the terms of the story. Not using it because you don't have it offers you no choice at all, and will always work against you and your story.”
― Syd Field, quote from Screenplay: The Foundations of Screenwriting
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.