“I guess I should have known back then. All the guys after him only left flesh wounds. Benjamin managed to get into my bones on day one.”
― Jay Bell, quote from Something Like Spring
“No wheelchair can support damaged self-esteem until it learns to stand upright. No cane can help emotions limp along until they can walk.
A cast or brace can't protect a vulnerable spirit, and not even the strongest painkiller can stop the ache cause by a failed relationship.
No, the only way a broken heart mends itself is with stitches of time and the sticky tape of hastily rearranged dreams.”
― Jay Bell, quote from Something Like Spring
“I've been waiting for you without even knowing it.”
― Jay Bell, quote from Something Like Spring
“Ladies and gentleman, Tim said. May I present to you, our son, Jason Grant!”
― Jay Bell, quote from Something Like Spring
“Jason hesitated. “Does it ever stop hurting?” “When you lose someone?” Jace considered this for a moment. “No. Not entirely. There will always be times when you think of him, and it’ll always hurt that it didn’t work out… but it won’t remain the constant pain you feel now. You might go weeks, maybe even months without thinking of him. Then, on the long sleepless nights when you do, you’ll feel a little pang of regret that still stings. That’s all.”
― Jay Bell, quote from Something Like Spring
“Jason nodded. “I’d be willing to give it a shot, although ideally, I would love to be out walking my dog and run into some cute guy walking his dog. Naturally that would lead to us talking. Then we’d start meeting in that same place every day, like little ten-minute dates. After weeks of this, maybe even months, we’d agree to meet without the dogs. Unchaperoned, so to speak. That would be romantic. Way more so than a party or a bar.”
― Jay Bell, quote from Something Like Spring
“Don't be sorry. The only thing love needs to apologize for is being too difficult to understand and too easy to give in to.”
― Jay Bell, quote from Something Like Spring
“It's called restraint, the part that wants to wander is always there, even for straight people. But commitment is commitment. Once I sign on the dotted line, I'll devote myself to that person only.”
― Jay Bell, quote from Something Like Spring
“there are people in this world who, after you meet them, you walk away a better person. No matter how okay you were before, they have a way of making you even better.”
― Jay Bell, quote from Something Like Spring
“Just in case, he had asked Ms. Townson to call him if William talked about leaving town. He hadn’t, obviously, making it possible now for him and William to dig through the refrigerator and stand at the counter making sandwiches together, all of which felt delightfully domestic. This would be their life together. Spreading margarine on white bread and debating if Swiss or American cheese was better. With any luck, they would be spending countless days this way, doing little mundane tasks that were so much better with someone to share them with.”
― Jay Bell, quote from Something Like Spring
“I am sure the ocean catches fire ocassionally.”
― Jay Bell, quote from Something Like Spring
“Half the time he seems self-centered, the other half it's like he lives solely for Ben.”
― Jay Bell, quote from Something Like Spring
“Strange how the present could become the past so quickly.”
― Jay Bell, quote from Something Like Spring
“It's much easier to just keep moving, keep avoiding the truth.”
― Jay Bell, quote from Something Like Spring
“Money can't buy love, but it certainly could rent it.”
― Jay Bell, quote from Something Like Spring
“Old habits die hard. Some refused to die at all.”
― Jay Bell, quote from Something Like Spring
Jay Bell
Born place: in The United States
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“His presence made me feel self-concious: of my appearance, of the way I was sitting, of my movements and gestures...It was the behavior of a woman reacting to a man who attracts her.”
― Alice Steinbach, quote from Without Reservations: The Travels of an Independent Woman
“Almost all our historical teaching was on this level. History was a series of unrelated, unintelligible but—in some way that was never explained to us—important facts with resounding phrases tied to them. Disraeli brought peace with honour. Clive was astonished at his moderation. Pitt called in the New World to redress the balance of the Old. And the dates, and the mnemonic devices! (Did you know, for example, that the initial letters of “A black Negress was my aunt: there’s her house behind the barn” are also the initial letters of the battles in the Wars of the Roses?) Bingo, who “took” the higher forms in history, revelled in this kind of thing. I recall positive orgies of dates, with the keener boys leaping up and down in their places in their eagerness to shout out the right answers, and at the same time not feeling the faintest interest in the meaning of the mysterious events they were naming. “1587?” “Massacre of St. Bartholomew!” “1707?” “Death of Aurangzeeb!” “1713?” “Treaty of Utrecht!” “1773?” “The Boston Tea Party!” “1520?” “Oo, Mum, please, Mum—” “Please, Mum, please, Mum! Let me tell him, Mum!” “Well; 1520?” “Field of the Cloth of Gold!” And so on.”
― George Orwell, quote from A Collection of Essays
“War...strengthened the position of the armament industries...to a point...that these industries dominated the economies and therefore the governments of all the participating nations...war barbarised and lowered the already very low level of accepted conduct.”
― Doris Lessing, quote from Re: Colonised Planet 5, Shikasta
“If we can’t be honest with ourselves, how can we ever tell the truth to the people out there?”
― Michael Connelly, quote from City of Bones
“I’ve been grasping at nothing, running in circles, trying desperately to fill the emptiness inside with nothing but air. If I think about it too much, I feel shame, so much shame. So I don’t.”
― Kerry Cohen, quote from Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity
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The Complete Short S...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.
