“God has to be a sadist to give people life.”
― Hitomi Kanehara, quote from Snakes and Earrings
“If you were God, what kind of human would you create?" I asked.
"I wouldn't change how they look. But I would make them as dumb as chickens. So dumb they'd never even imagine the existence of a god.”
― Hitomi Kanehara, quote from Snakes and Earrings
“I collapsed on to the ground and broke down in tears. Screw you. Go to hell, you fuckers. I wish I had a greater vocabulary to fully express the extent of my pain and hatred. But I don't. I'm just pathetic. That's all I am.”
― Hitomi Kanehara, quote from Snakes and Earrings
“The silence of the room was shattered with a wail of pain coming from deep within me.”
― Hitomi Kanehara, quote from Snakes and Earrings
“It’s what’s known as the ‘why feed a fish if it’s already in your net’ mentality, but when a fish runs out of food, it has one of two choices: to escape or die”
― Hitomi Kanehara, quote from Snakes and Earrings
“In finnish:
"Ajan myötä lohikäärme ja kirin loivat rupensa ja veivät muodonmuutoksensa loppuun asti, ja niin niistä tuli osa ruumistani. Nyt ne olivat oikeasti omaisuuttani - sana, jota käytin mielelläni ajatellessani niitä.
Mutta oli myös mahdollista, että niiden arvo alenisi uutuudenviehätyksen kadottua. Samaan tapaan saattaa omistaa upean mekon, joka saa olon tuntumaan mahtavalta. Mutta eipä aikaakaan, kun se on pelkkä vaatekappale muiden joukossa. Olin kai siinä mielessä ollut aina oikukas ja viskannut vaatteita kaapinperälle käytettyäni niitä vain pari, kolme kertaa. Näkemykseni avioliitosta on paljolti samanlainen. Näen sen tilanteena, jossa kaksi ihmistä yrittää omistaa toisensa. Tai vaikka ei olisikaan naimisissa, pojat yrittävät aina jotain tuonsuuntaista: mitä kauemmin heidän kanssaan on, sitä enemmän he yrittävät asteittain kasvattaa valtaansa toiseen ihmiseen.”
― Hitomi Kanehara, quote from Snakes and Earrings
“All I wanted was to be part of an underground world where the sun doesn't shine, there are no serenades, and the sound of children's laughter is never, ever heard.”
― Hitomi Kanehara, quote from Snakes and Earrings
“And somewhere inside me I felt an awful feeling that something in my life was coming quietly to an end.”
― Hitomi Kanehara, quote from Snakes and Earrings
“He loved me and I would rather have him become one with me than disappear from my life. Then I'd never have to be away from him ever again. He said I was important to him. So why did he leave me? How could he leave me?”
― Hitomi Kanehara, quote from Snakes and Earrings
“All I could do was escape from reality, but every time I tried to escape from the pain, that same pain told me that I had probably been falling in love with him.”
― Hitomi Kanehara, quote from Snakes and Earrings
“The more Amy struggled, the faster she sank. Every month she shuffled around less and less money to cover the same number of bills. The hamster wheel kept spinning and spinning and spinning. Sometimes she wanted to let go and find out exactly how far she’d fall if she just stopped fighting. She didn’t expect life to be fair, but did it have to be so relentless?”
― Grady Hendrix, quote from Horrorstör
“She had read articles over the years about a man's supposed biological craving for young women: it was all about primeval procreation, in theory, the need to plant seed in fertile soil. Maybe. ... She thought of a line from Nabokov: "Because you took advantage of my disadvantage." Lolita. In this case, however, Kristin felt that she was at the disadvantage - not the young thing. The truth was, she feared, all men were Humbert Humbert. Maybe they weren't pedophiles lusting after twelve-year-olds, but didn't Lolita look old for her age? Older, anyway? Sure, there were MILFs in porn, but Kristin had a feeling that considerably more men wanted their porn stars to be students at Duke University than moms from the bleachers at a middle-school soccer game.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Guest Room
“Lina said to Fundevogel: 'Never leave me, and I will never leave you.' Fundevogel said: 'Neither now, nor ever.' Then said Lina: 'Do you become a rose-tree, and I the rose upon it.”
― Jacob Grimm, quote from Grimm's Complete Fairy Tales
“At daybreak on the first day, thousands of Cambodians are already calmly waiting outside my polling station. They squat on the ground, silent and patient. We didn't expect this at all. We thought they would fail to understand how democracy works. We thought they would be afraid of the Khmer Rouge. We thought they would passively accept their fate. We were wrong.”
― quote from Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone
“But fathers are soft on daughters. Look how Dad favors Angela. He gave her ten times more. Because she reminded him of Mae West. He was always smiling at her boobs. He wasn't aware of it. Mother and I saw it.”
― Saul Bellow, quote from Mr. Sammler's Planet
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.