“Life is full of grief, to exactly the degree we allow ourselves to love other people.”
“If you give orders and explain nothing, you might get obedience, but you'll get no creativity. If you tell them your purpose, then when your original plan is shown to be faulty, they'll find another way to achieve your goal. Explaining to your men doesn't weaken their respect for you, it proves your respect for them.”
“Nobody ever completely means what they say. Even when they think they're telling the truth, there's always something hidden behind their words.”
“You don't want to give God the credit because you don't think he exists. But if you're going to blame him for all the crap, kid, you got to give him credit for what grows from that fertilized soil.”
“The child is mine and Petra's. It's especially important to us because it's the first we know of that definitely does not have my condition."
"You mean it isn't ugly?”
“So the I.F. is spying on Earth."
"Just as a mother spies on her children at play in the yard."
"Good to know you're looking out for us, Mummy.”
“Mine mine mine. That was the curse and power of human beings—that what they saw and loved they had to have. They could share it with other people but only if they conceived of those people as being somehow their own. What we own is ours. What you own should also be ours. In fact, you own nothing, if we want it. Because you are nothing. We are the real people, you are only posing as people in order to try to deprive us of what God means us to have.”
“What about this? A colony of nothing but Battle School grads. If they bred true, they'd be the smartest military minds in the galaxy.
Then they'd come home and take over Earth.
OK, not that.”
“I don't care how loyal you think you're going to be Dink. It's not in you. You're a brat and you always will be. So admit what a lousy follower you are and go ahead and LEAD.
-Petra”
“the cruelest, narrowest, most evil people will always rise to power because they'll always be the ones most willing to wrap themselves in the crescent flag and murder people in God's name.”
“That's the problem with Peter," said Theresa.
"Only the one?" said Peter.”
“It was an unbroken network of causality leading back to the first human who wasn't a chimp. And farther back, to the coalescing of the planets around the sun. If you wish to call that God, go ahead.”
“You're not crazy. You're not evil. But you can't stop.”
“The emotion she could deal with best was anger.”
“Like Santa Claus. You adults pretend he doesn't exist, but we know that he really does.”
“Since I don't have actual authority over anybody, Petra, how can it possibly matter if I'm not legitimately authorized?”
“Nobody ever completely means what they say. Even when they think they’re telling the truth, there’s always something hidden behind their words.”
“How much time? Not as much as I had yesterday.”
“Pero la naturaleza de los subordinados era usar el poder de manera intrépida, ya que la culpa siempre podía achacarse tanto a los de abajo como a los de arriba.”
“—Así que nos convertimos en lo que necesitamos ser.”
“Dar explicaciones a tus hombres no mengua el respeto que sienten por ti, sino que demuestra tu respeto por ellos.”
“Porque los que llegan a la cima en un imperio son los intrigantes, los asesinos o los señores de la guerra.”
“It’s like communes—people with nothing are always willing to share.”
“A man's presence suggests what he is capable of doing to you or for you. By contrast, a woman's presence . . . defines what can and cannot be done to her.”
“hair. He’s bald now. But he still looks like he could ride a bull ragged.” I jump at the sound of the garage door. Mom gives me a little wave, then crosses the kitchen as silently as if she were floating on a magic carpet and disappears down the hall. Moments later, my father walks through the kitchen door, his face drawn and tired. “I figured you’d be waiting for me.” “Dad, we’ve got to talk.” Dread seems to seep from the pores in his face. “Let me get a drink. I’ll meet you in the library.”
“So, he made this report to me. Now, make no mistake, Ty, I take my work seriously but I gotta admit, he gave this report, I lost my pen. Swear to God, don’t know where I put that fucker.”
“The Bombyx mori caterpillar," her brother supplied, thinking of snack time at the Shaolin Temple. "It tastes like chicken.”
“I love sunrises, even more than sunsets. There's something so exciting about the world coming to life in a thousand colors. It's hopeful.”
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.