“That's what Jamie didn't understand: it was never just sex. Even the fastest, dirtiest, most impersonal screw was about more than sex. It was about connection. It was about looking at another human being and seeing your own loneliness and neediness reflected back. It was recognising that together you had the power to temporarily banish that sense of isolation. It was about experiencing what it was to be human at the basest, most instinctive level. How could that be described as just anything?”
― Emily Maguire, quote from Taming the Beast
“But then, life is a constant withering of possibilities. Some are stolen with the lives of people you love. Others are let go, with regret and reluctance and deep, deep sorrow. But there is compensation for lives unlived in the intoxicating joy of knowing that the life you have - right here, right now - if the one you have chosen. There is power in that, and hope.”
― Emily Maguire, quote from Taming the Beast
“Real love should draw no blood from the loved and buckets from the lover.”
― Emily Maguire, quote from Taming the Beast
“The thing I never understood about love is that it can't be quelled, like lust can. With love, if you follow its call, if you give in to it, it just gets worse. The more you have, the deeper you go, the more you need.”
― Emily Maguire, quote from Taming the Beast
“Sarah learnt a lot from Alex. Like the way men could say one thing, then another, then act in a way inconsistent with both positions and somehow still be convinced of their own integrity.”
― Emily Maguire, quote from Taming the Beast
“And reading this way - with no deadline, no agenda - she remembered why she loved literature so much. It was like fucking a new man and knowing that he had made other women come, but that when she came it would be an unshareable, untranslatable pleasure. She opened herself up to her books, and the words got inside her and fucked her senseless.”
― Emily Maguire, quote from Taming the Beast
“Sarah felt like the bad girl in an eighties teen flick. The girl with big hair and a tight shirt who seduces the nice girl’s boyfriend but loses him in the end, because she’s shallow and tacky and no match for a sweet girl with good morals and freshly scrubbed skin.”
― Emily Maguire, quote from Taming the Beast
“Neither were you [born yesterday], unless of course I am wrong, in which case welcome to the world, little baby, and congratulations on learning to read so early in life. ”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Penultimate Peril
“In this also we are men, that we think of the dead. Once it was not so, and when one of us died, he lay where he lay by the cave-mouth and we ran in and out there, not standing quite upright as we ran. Now we stand upright, and now also we think of the dead.
So, when the comrade lies there, we do not let him lie where he died. And we do not take him by the legs carelessly, and drag him into the forest for the foxes and woodrats to gnaw on. We do not cast him into the river carelessly for the stream to float him away.
No, but rather we lay him where the ground is hollowed out a little and there cover him with leaves and branches. So he shall return to the earth, whence all things came.
Or else we lay him to rest among the tree-branches, and give him to the air. Then, if the black birds come streaming from far to pluck at him, that too is right, for they are the creatures of the air.
Or else we give him to the bright and hot cleanliness of fire.
Then we go about our life as before, and soon we forget, like the beasts. But this at least we have done, and when we shall no longer do it, then we shall no longer be men.”
― George R. Stewart, quote from Earth Abides
“Even while writing his book, he had become painfully aware how little he knew his own planet while attempting to piece together another one from jagged bits filched from deranged brains.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, quote from Ada, or Ardor: A Family Chronicle
“Oh, we are but soft and squishy bags of mortality rolling in a bin of sharp circumstance, leaking life until we collapse, flaccid, into our own despair..”
― Christopher Moore, quote from Fool
“He'd lost me at "vampire."
Nuts. Lucius Vladescu is completely nuts. And I'm alone with him, in an empty barn.
So I did what any sane person would do. I jammed the pitchfork in the general direction of his foot and ran like hell for the house, ignoring his yowl of pain.”
― Beth Fantaskey, quote from Jessica's Guide to Dating on the Dark Side
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.