“In theory it was, around now, Literature. Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.”
“It was sad music. But it waved its sadness like a battle flag. It said the universe had done all it could, but you were still alive.”
“She got on with her education. In her opinion, school kept on trying to interfere with it.”
“Death strode away, stopped, and came back. He pointed a skeletal finger at The Duck Man.
WHY, he said, ARE YOU WALKING AROUND WITH THAT DUCK?
"What duck?"
AH. SORRY.”
“We're on a mission from Glod.”
“But this didn't feel like magic. It felt a lot older than that. It felt like music.”
“TO CHANGE THE FATE OF ONE INDIVIDUAL IS TO CHANGE THE WORLD.”
“Sometimes the only thing you could do for people was to be there.”
“The universe danced towards life. Life was a remarkably common commodity. Anything sufficiently complicated seemed to get cut in for some, in the same way that anything massive enough got a generous helping of gravity. The universe had a definite tendency towards awareness. This suggested a certain subtle cruelty woven into the very fabric of space-time.”
“Most horses don't walk backwards voluntarily, because what they can't see doesn't exist.”
“I MAY HAVE ALLOWED MYSELF SOME FLICKER OF EMOTION IN THE RECENT PAST, said Death, BUT I CAN GIVE IT UP ANY TIME I LIKE.”
“The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind.”
“Or -- and this she knew was a far more accurate way of looking at it -- the book was true and reality was lying.”
“There are millions of chords. There are millions of numbers. And everyone forgets the one that is a zero. But without the zero, numbers are just arithmetic. Without the empty chord, music is just noise.”
“The fastest way to travel is to be there already.”
“It was raining in the small, mountainous country of Llamedos. It was always raining in Llamedos. Rain was the country's main export. It had rain mines.”
“In my experience, what every true artist wants, really wants, is to be paid.”
“It is said that whomsoever the gods wish to destroy, they first make mad. In fact, whomsoever the gods wish to destroy, they first hand the equivalent of a stick with a fizzing fuse and Acme Dynamite Company written on the side. It's more interesting, and doesn't take so long.”
“The universe was bad enough without people poking it.”
“There are the people of the day, and the creatures of the night. And it's important to remember that the creatures of the night aren't simply the people of the day staying up late because they think that makes them cool and interesting. It takes more than heavy mascara and a pale complexion to cross the divide.”
“Words have always had the power to change the world.”
“Susan hated Literature. She'd much prefer to read a good book.”
“The Captain of the Watch says if you're still in the City by sunrise he will personally have you buried alive.”
“She had a tall bearing and a tall voice and a tall manner, and was tall in every respect except height. Amazingly, she'd apparently been able to keep this a secret from people.”
“Certain things have to happen before other things. Gods play games with the fates of men. But first they have to get all the pieces on the board, and look all over the place for the dice.”
“You see the lighted windows and what you want to think is that there may be many interesting stories behind them, but what you know is that really there are just dull, dull souls, mere consumers of food, who think their instincts are emotions and their tiny lives of more account than a whisper of wind.”
“Bee there Orr Bee A Rectangular Thyng”
“The Library didn’t only contain magical books, the ones which are chained to their shelves and are very dangerous. It also contained perfectly ordinary books, printed on commonplace paper in mundane ink. It would be a mistake to think that they weren’t also dangerous, just because reading them didn’t make fireworks go off in the sky. Reading them sometimes did the more dangerous trick of making fireworks go off in the privacy of the reader’s brain.”
“To write,” Marguerite Duras remarked, “is also not to speak. It is to keep silent. It is to howl noiselessly.”
“Frank treated customers with the contempt Rosy had only seen before at airport passport control. Even then, she’d never heard an immigration official refer to anybody as baldy.
“Hey, baldy,” Frank had said and whistled to call a customer back as though he were down in the paddock with an unruly herd. “You forgot your juice.”
Frank held up the bottle of Tropicana orange juice. And when… baldy came back, Frank slapped the bottle into his hand as though passing him the baton in a relay race, then waved the man aside—“Go!”—and pointed at the next customer.
“What do you want?” Frank said. “Cheese? Again? That’s three cheese you’ll have had in a row. Are you eating right?”
The customer stammered.
“Eh-but-eh-but-eh-but,” Frank mimicked. “Never mind. But think up a different filling next time. And not cheese and tomato.” He shook his head and made up the roll.”
“she turned the page and scanned them again, committing them to memory.”
“The water moves on, a little faster than before, yet still the great river flows. It is as fluid and unpredictable in its moods as it has ever been, but it meanders within familiar banks.”
“It’s just how love gets described in the movies. Like in Sleepless in Seattle . . .” This is the movie they showed us last night. “Tom Hanks’s character is musing about why he fell in love with his dead wife, and he says that it was because she could peel an apple in one long strip, or something like that. And I was reading something similar in a book recently, only that was about peeling an orange . . . anyway . . . I’ve just never felt like the way someone peels fruit would be a reason to spend the rest of your life with them.”
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.