“There are some words that once spoken will split the world in two. There would be the life before you breathed them and then the altered life after they'd been said. They take a long time to find, words like that. They make you hesitate. Choose with care. Hold on to them unspoken for as long as you can just so your world will stay intact.”
― Andrea Levy, quote from Small Island
“He looked so pained that I dreamed of taking his hands and making him dance”
― Andrea Levy, quote from Small Island
“Describe snow to someone who's lived in the desert. Depict the colour blue for a blind man. Almost impossible to fashion the word.”
― Andrea Levy, quote from Small Island
“Paved with gold, no - but, yes, diamonds appear on the ground in the rain”
― Andrea Levy, quote from Small Island
“Why you wan' the whole world when ya have a likkle piece a hope here? Stay. Stay and fight, man. Fight till you look 'pon what you wan' see.”
― Andrea Levy, quote from Small Island
“Gilbert: How Clark Gable turn every women's head so? Foolish young English girls would see a movie star in every GI with the same Yankee-doodle voice. Glamour in US privates named Jed, Buck or Chip, with their easy-come-by-gifts and Uncle Sam sweet-talk. Dreamboats in hooligans from Delaware or Arizona with fingernails that still carried soil from home, and eyes that crossed with any attempt at reading. Heart-throbs from men like those in the tea-shop, who dated their very close relatives and knew cattle as their mental equal.”
― Andrea Levy, quote from Small Island
“There are some words that once spoken will split the world in two. There would be the life before you breathed them and then the altered life after they'd been said. They take a long time to find, words like that. They make you hesitate. Choose with care.”
― Andrea Levy, quote from Small Island
“No, no, no, no. Don't get carried away, man. One thaw is not the summer.”
― Andrea Levy, quote from Small Island
“A mass whose desperation made them seem like the feckless, and whose drab presence drained the classroom of all colours until even the white potties at the corner glinted like diamonds. I will never forgive Hitler for turning human beings into that.”
― Andrea Levy, quote from Small Island
“And all the mumbo-jumbo of reincarnation. Man into ox into ape into beetle into eight million four hundred thousand kinds of animate things. Proof? We do not go in for such pedestrian pastimes as proof! That is Western. We are of the mysterious East. No proof, just faith. No reason, just faith.”
― Khushwant Singh, quote from Train to Pakistan
“Now, for the first time, I wonder if this is how my mother felt. If cancer was her prison; the chemo treatments, torture. I understand it. I would rather die.”
― Abigail Haas, quote from Dangerous Girls
“Palmira. She’s like an apparition floating unknowingly into her future,' I said. 'Here for too brief a time.”
― Susan Vreeland, quote from The Passion of Artemisia
“Ohh, how clever," Aden said and clapped. "A death threat. You know what's funny? That's not even my first of the day.”
― Gena Showalter, quote from Intertwined
“I can barely breathe. I feel like I’m going to explode. Jake Wilder is kissing me. French-kissing me. Is he even supposed to be French-kissing me for the play? I thought… Oh, who cares if he’s supposed to or not. He is, that’s all that matters.”
― Mari Mancusi, quote from Boys that Bite
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.