“Simply to endure is to triumph.”
― Patricia McCormick, quote from Sold
“If you look hard enough, chaos turns into order the way letters turn into words.”
― Patricia McCormick, quote from Sold
“This affliction--hope--is so cruel and stubborn, I believe it will kill me”
― Patricia McCormick, quote from Sold
“Trying to remember, I have learned, is like trying to clutch a handful of fog. Trying to forget, like trying to hold back the monsoon.”
― Patricia McCormick, quote from Sold
“Instead, we linger over a luxury that costs nothing: Imagining what may be.”
― Patricia McCormick, quote from Sold
“In the evening, the brilliant yellow pumpkin blossoms will close, drunk on sunshine, while the milky white jasmine will open their slender throats and sip the chill Himalayan air.
At night, low hearths will send up wispy curls of smoke fragrant with a dozen dinners, and darkness will clothe the land.
Except on nights when the moon is full. On those nights, the hillside and the valley below are bathed in a magical white light, the glow of the perpetual snows that blanket the mountaintops. On those nights I lie restless in the sleeping loft, wondering what the world is like beyond my mountain home.”
― Patricia McCormick, quote from Sold
“Inside my head I carry:
my baby goat,
my baby brother,
my ama's face,
our family's future.
My bundle is light.
My burden is heavy.”
― Patricia McCormick, quote from Sold
“Guard the portals of your mind.”
― Patricia McCormick, quote from Sold
“When I have run out of words to copy, I look out the window at this strange place called India. Inside the train, the people around me are snoring. I don't understand how they can close their eyes when there is so much to see.”
― Patricia McCormick, quote from Sold
“My bundle is light.
My burden is heavy.”
― Patricia McCormick, quote from Sold
“Ama wipes her hands on her apron, looks up at our old roof with new eyes, and lifts the baby from his basket. She twirls him in the air, her skirts flying around her ankles the way the clouds swirl around the mountain cap--her laughter fresh and strange and musical to my ears.”
― Patricia McCormick, quote from Sold
“A KIND OF ILLNESS
This ache in my chest is a relentless thing, worse than any fever.
A fever is gone with a few of Mumtaz's white pills. But this illness has had me in its grip for a week now.
This affliction--hope--is so cruel and stubborn, I believe it will kill me.”
― Patricia McCormick, quote from Sold
“A man who doles out sweets, and slaps, with the same hand.”
― Patricia McCormick, quote from Sold
“i inhale deeply,
drinking the warmth in the scent of mountain sunshine,
a warmth that smells of freshly turned soil and clean laundry baking in the sun.”
― Patricia McCormick, quote from Sold
“I have been beaten here,
locked away,
violated a hundred times,
and a hundred times more.
I have been starved,
and cheated,
tricked
and disgraced.
How odd is it that I am undone by the simple kindness of a small boy with a yellow pencil.”
― Patricia McCormick, quote from Sold
“Auntie says that in the city, people gather and pay money to see beautiful women and handsome men put on a show. The people in the show are called movie stars.”
― Patricia McCormick, quote from Sold
“I have been beaten here,
locked away,
violated a hundred times
and a hundred times more.
I have been starved
and cheated,
tricked
and disgraced.
How odd it is that I am undone by the simple kindness of a small boy with a yellow pencil.”
― Patricia McCormick, quote from Sold
“The takeaway message here, as Jablonski points out, is that there is no such thing as different races of humans. Any differences we traditionally associate with race are a product of our need for vitamin D and our relationship to the Sun. Just a few clusters of genes control skin color; the changes in skin color are recent; they’ve gone back and forth with migrations; they are not the same even among two groups with similarly dark skin; and they are tiny compared to the total human genome. So skin color and “race” are neither significant nor consistent defining traits. We all descended from the same African ancestors, with little genetic separation from each other. The different colors or tones of skin are the result of an evolutionary response to ultraviolet light in local environments. Everybody has brown skin tinted by the pigment melanin. Some people have light brown skin. Some people have dark brown skin. But we all are brown, brown, brown.”
― Bill Nye, quote from Undeniable: Evolution and the Science of Creation
“There was always that shadowy twin, thin when i was fat, fat when i was thin, myself in silvery narrative...”
― Margaret Atwood, quote from Lady Oracle
“إنّ من المحال أن نحصل على كلِّ ما نرغب فيه من الوهلة الأولى.”
― Comtesse de Ségur, quote from Sophie's Misfortunes
“That time of year thou mayst in me behold
When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang
Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day
As after sunset fadeth in the west;
Which by and by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire,
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the deathbed whereon it must expire,
Consumed with that which it was nourished by.
This thou perceiv’st, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
(Sonnet 73 (1609))”
― William Shakespeare, quote from The Complete Sonnets and Poems
“Gray hadn’t been laid in over six weeks, Jack only three, but if Gray said come, even sperm did a mass exodus for fear of going one-on-one with the man. Jack was going down, and he was going down, in Jack’s words, hard-fucked style. Giving”
― Jack L. Pyke, quote from Antidote
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.