“She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.”
“Have been unavoidably detained by the world. Expect us when you see us.”
“You have to believe. Otherwise, it will never happen.”
“A philosopher once asked, "Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at them because we are human?" Pointless, really..."Do the stars gaze back?" Now, that's a question.”
“Every lover is, in his heart, a madman, and, in his head, a minstrel.”
“Anyone who believes what a cat tells him deserves all he gets.”
“Adventures are all very well in their place, but there's a lot to be said for regular meals and freedom from pain.”
“I am the most miserable person who ever lived," he said... "You are young, and in love," said Primus. "Every young man in your position is the most miserable young man who ever lived.”
“He stared up at the stars: and it seemed to him then that they were dancers, stately and graceful, performing a dance almost infinite in its complexity. He imagined he could see the very faces of the stars; pale, they were, and smiling gently, as if they had spent so much time above the world, watching the scrambling and the joy and the pain of the people below them, that they could not help being amused every time another little human believed itself the center of its world, as each of us does.”
“He wondered how it could have taken him so long to realize he cared for her, and he told her so, and she called him an idiot, and he declared that it was the finest thing that ever a man had been called.”
“There was once a young man who wished to gain his Heart’s Desire.”
“What do stars do? They shine.”
“So what I want to know is why it is that I can no longer find you, in my mind. You are still there, just, but you are there like a ghost, a will o' the wisp. Not long ago you burned--your heart burned--in my mind like silver fire. But after that night in the inn it became patchy and dim, and now it is not there at all."
"Could it be that the heart that you seek is no longer my own? I have given my heart to another."
"The boy? The one in the inn? With the unicorn?"
"Yes."
"You should have let me take it back then, for my sisters and me. We could have been young again, well into the next age of the world. Your boy will break it, or waste it, or lose it. They all do."
"Nonetheless, he has my heart. I hope your sisters will not be too hard on you, when you return to them without it.”
“There is a proverbial saying chiefly concerned with warning against too closely calculating the numerical value of un-hatched chicks.”
“It's not hard to own something. Or everything. You just have to know that it's yours, and then be willing to let it go.”
“You know when I said I knew little about love? That wasn't true. I know a lot about love. I've seen it, centuries and centuries of it, and it was the only thing that made watching your world bearable. All those wars. Pain, lies, hate... It made me want to turn away and never look down again. But when I see the way that mankind loves... You could search to the furthest reaches of the universe and never find anything more beautiful. So yes, I know that love is unconditional. But I also know that it can be unpredictable, unexpected, uncontrollable, unbearable and strangely easy to mistake for loathing, and... What I'm trying to say, Tristan is... I think I love you. Is this love, Tristan? I never imagined I'd know it for myself. My heart... It feels like my chest can barely contain it. Like it's trying to escape because it doesn't belong to me any more. It belongs to you. And if you wanted it, I'd wish for nothing in exchange - no gifts. No goods. No demonstrations of devotion. Nothing but knowing you loved me too. Just your heart, in exchange for mine.”
“Tristan and Yvaine were happy together. Not forever-after, for Time, the thief, eventually takes all things into his dusty storehouse, but they were happy, as these things go, for a long while”
“He was painfully shy, which, as is often the manner of the painfully shy, he overcompensated for by being too loud at the wrong times.”
“They kissed for the first time then in the cold spring rain, though neither one of them now knew that it was raining. Tristran's heart pounded in his chest as if it was not big enough to contain all the joy that it held. He opened his eyes as he kissed the star. Her sky-blue eyes stared back into his, and in her eyes he could see no parting from her.”
“She could hear, some way off, her brothers calling to each other in the woods behind the house. She hoped desperately that their game wouldn't bring them any closer, that they wouldn't scare the birds away.
Somehow she knew that you didn't get many moments like this in your life: moments when you knew, without any doubt, that you were alive, when you felt the air in your lungs and the wet grass beneath your feet and the cotton on your skin; moments when you were completely in the present, when neither the past nor the future mattered.
She tried to slow her breathing, hoping somehow to make this moment last forever.”
“Are we human because we gaze at the stars, or do we gaze at the stars because we are human?”
“And there was a voice, a high clear, female voice, which said "Ow", and then, very quietly, it said "Fuck", and then it said "Ow", once more.”
“The squirrel has not yet found the acorn that will grow into the oak that will be cut to form the cradle of the babe that will grow to slay me.”
“While clothes do not, as the saying would sometimes have it, make the man, and fine feathers do not make fine birds, sometimes they can add a certain spice to a recipe.”
“The only ones who ever come here from your lands are the minstrels, and the lovers, and the mad. And you don't look like much of a minstrel, and you're— pardon me for saying so lad, but it's true— ordinary as cheese crumbs. So it's love if you ask me.”
“So, having found a lady, could you not have come to her aid, or left her alone? Why drag her into your foolishness?'
'Love,' he explained.
She looked at him with eyes the blue of the sky. 'I hope you choke on it,' she said, flatly.”
“I just want you to know,' said the girl, coldly, 'that whoever you are and whatever you intend with me, I shall give you no aid of any kind, nor shall I assist you, and I shall do whatever is in my power to frustrate your plans and devices.' And then she added, with feeling, 'Idiot.”
“I knowed a man in Paphlagonia who'd swallow a live snake every morning, when he got up. He used to say, he was certain of one thing, that nothing worse would happen to him all day. 'Course they made him eat a bowlful of hairy centipedes before they hung him, so maybe that claim was a bit presumptive.”
“He was walking into Faerie, in search of a fallen star, with no idea how he would find the star, nor how to keep himself safe and whole as he tried. He looked back and fancied that he could see the lights of Wall behind him, wavering and glimmering as if in a heat-haze, but still inviting.”
“Willfully turing aside from the truth is treason to one's self”
“Idite, prijatelji, i neka vas hrani ona umna sfera, čije je središte svuda a obim nigde, i koju mi zovemo bog. A kada dođete u svoj svet, posvedočite da pod zemljom ima velikog blaga i divnih stvari. Nije pogrešila Cerera, koju je cela vasiona već uvažavala, – jer je ljude poučila veštini zemljoradnje i pronalaskom žita prekinula sa njihovom grubom pićom žirovkom, – što je toliko naricala kada joj je kći u podzemlje odvedena. Ona je svakako predviđala da će njena kći pod zemljom naći više dobra i prevashodnosti no što je to ona, mati njena, iznad zemlje stvorila.
Šta je bilo sa veštinom koju je mudri Prometej nekada pronašao: da se izaziva grom s neba i nebeski oganj? Svakako ste je izgubili. Napustila je vašu hemisferu, a ovde, pod zemljom, ona je u upotrebi. Vi se ponekad zgražate, videći da vam gradovi gore i da ih obuhvata plamen od groma i ognja eterskog, a ne znate ko to čini, gde to čini i s koje strane na vas navodi tu napast, koja je vama grozna, a mi smo na nju svikli i njom se koristimo po svom nahođenju. Vaši filozofi koji se žale da su drevni pisci već sve napisali i da im nisu ostavili ništa novo da otkriju, svakako nisu u pravu. Ono što vam se s neba javlja i što vi nazivate pojavama, ono što vam zemlja pokazuje, ono što sadrže more i druge reke, ne da se uporediti sa onim što zemlja skriva.”
“Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever”
“But guessing a thing ain’t knowing a thing.”
“Goldstein, you'd be a pretty good boy if you wasn't so chicken.”
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.