“What's the point of being a hero when everyone thinks you're a villain?”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Smoke
“Some people
Are worthy of a bullet straight
to the heart because that is where
cruelty evolves into evil.
Some
humans aren't human at all,
despite how they appear.
Humanity is what lives inside
people,
harbored beneath skin, flesh,
and bone.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Smoke
“My grandmother used to say God gives us drought years-years drained of happiness-to prepare us for bounteous times. I'm more than ready for bounty.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Smoke
“Right Here.
Beside a living, breathing human
being who cares for me. I can see
it in the cool lagoons of his eyes,
hear it in the timbre of his voice
when he speaks my name.
Right here.
Where the warmth of his skin
tempers the February cold and
the thinnest beam of his inner
light overcomes winter's pall.
He is a candle in the wilderness.
Right here.
Where the omnipresent specter
of death takes flight, awed
by the power of the two of us,
hearts beating in unison, as we
stumble through the darkness
toward one another.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Smoke
“Happiness is a bull's-eye, awaiting arrows of pain.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Smoke
“Home. What does it mean to me? Will I ever know home again?”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Smoke
“Love is a pain in disguise, a scorpion lying in wait for just the right moment to strike and inject you with its poison before scuttling off into the shadows.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Smoke
“But if there is a hereafter, one my father has been welcomed into, it must be a godless wasteland.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Smoke
“I have no right to love you, but I do.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Smoke
“Can 'love and obey' possibly go together?”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Smoke
“It's one thing to crave a shot of adventure, a taste of something new, and quite another to become immersed in the extraordinary, where you're not quite certain if you're safe or stuck in limbo.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Smoke
“Some people blunt such pain with dope or booze or a dive into madness, but I don't have such luxuries available to me.”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Smoke
“You know, when a guy is just dumb enough to make you feel smart, but not so dumb that he makes you feel dumb for dating him?”
― quote from White Girl Problems
“Visiting America in the early nineteenth century, Alexis de Tocqueville observd that 'the sects that exist in the United States are innumerable,' and yet 'all sects preach the same moral law in the name of God.' Tocqueville termed religion the first of America's political institutions, which means that it had a profoundly public effect in regulating morality and mores throughout the society. And he saw Christianity as countering the powerful human instincts of selfishness and ambition by holding out an ideal of charity and devotion to the welfare of others.”
― Dinesh D'Souza, quote from What's So Great About Christianity
“I did not see Pirahã teenagers moping, sleeping in late, refusing to accept responsibility for their own actions, or trying out what they considered to be radically new approaches to life. They in fact are highly productive and conformist members of their community in the Pirahã sense of productivity (good fishermen, contributing generally to the security, food needs, and other aspects of the physical survival of the community). One gets no sense of teenage angst, depression, or insecurity among the Pirahã youth. They do not seem to be searching for answers. They have them. And new questions rarely arise.”
― Daniel L. Everett, quote from Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle
“In place of a hermeneutics we need an erotics of art.”
― Susan Sontag, quote from Against Interpretation and Other Essays
“Ambition left to itself, like a Rupert Murdoch, always becomes tedious, its only object the creation of larger and larger empires of control; but a true vocation calls us out beyond ourselves; breaks our heart in the process and then humbles, simplifies and enlightens us about the hidden, core nature of the work that enticed us in the first place. We find that all along, we had what we needed from the beginning and that in the end we have returned to its essence, an essence we could not understand until we had undertaken the journey.”
― David Whyte, quote from Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words
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.