“You know. Life's short. If you don't try new things, you'll never know what you're best at. And you can only make time for new things by quitting the things you know don't work for you.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Teen Idol
“But I guess you would look beatific, too, if the man you had been in love with since the fifth grade had told you that he was in love with you, too.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Teen Idol
“The fact that he was willing to sacrifice his own face in order to keep mine from getting bashed in”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Teen Idol
“I was in love with Scott Bennett. That I had been in love with him my whole life, practically.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Teen Idol
“We kissed all the way through the fireworks display. We didn’t even notice that there was a fireworks display… …I guess because we’d been making fireworks of our own.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Teen Idol
“Because my heat was too full of appreciation for what my friends-- my real friends-- had done for me.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Teen Idol
“She'd realize Steve was her soul mate and that she would never love anyone as much as she loved him.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Teen Idol
“I thought if you wore that, no matter what face you saw every morning in the mirror," he said in his deep voice, "you'll never forget who you really are."
My eyes filling with tear, I held my hand out across the tabletop. He grasped my fingers, his grip strong and reassuring.
"As if I ever could," I said, my voice clogged with emotion, "with you around to remind me.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Teen Idol
“What's wrong?"
"Nothing," I said. Because nothing was wrong. For the first time in my entire life, it seemed, everything was suddenly, fantastically right.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Teen Idol
“You know. Life’s short. If you don’t try new things, you’ll never know what you’re best at. And you can only make time for new things by quitting the things you know don’t work for you.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Teen Idol
“I
On the calm black water where the stars are sleeping
White Ophelia floats like a great lily;
Floats very slowly, lying in her long veils...
- In the far-off woods you can hear them sound the mort.
For more than a thousand years sad Ophelia
Has passed, a white phantom, down the long black river.
For more than a thousand years her sweet madness
Has murmured its ballad to the evening breeze.
The wind kisses her breasts and unfolds in a wreath
Her great veils rising and falling with the waters;
The shivering willows weep on her shoulder,
The rushes lean over her wide, dreaming brow.
The ruffled water-lilies are sighing around her;
At times she rouses, in a slumbering alder,
Some nest from which escapes a small rustle of wings;
- A mysterious anthem falls from the golden stars.
II
O pale Ophelia! beautiful as snow!
Yes child, you died, carried off by a river!
- It was the winds descending from the great mountains of Norway
That spoke to you in low voices of better freedom.
It was a breath of wind, that, twisting your great hair,
Brought strange rumors to your dreaming mind;
It was your heart listening to the song of Nature
In the groans of the tree and the sighs of the nights;
It was the voice of mad seas, the great roar,
That shattered your child's heart, too human and too soft;
It was a handsome pale knight, a poor madman
Who one April morning sate mute at your knees!
Heaven! Love! Freedom! What a dream, oh poor crazed Girl!
You melted to him as snow does to a fire;
Your great visions strangled your words
- And fearful Infinity terrified your blue eye!
III
- And the poet says that by starlight
You come seeking, in the night, the flowers that you picked
And that he has seen on the water, lying in her long veils
White Ophelia floating, like a great lily.”
― Arthur Rimbaud, quote from A Season in Hell/The Drunken Boat
“There is a saying among the peoples of the Northwest Coast: “The world is as sharp as the edge of a knife,” and Robert Davidson, the man responsible for carving Masset’s first post-missionary pole, imagines this edge as a circle. “If you live on the edge of the circle,” he explained in a documentary film, “that is the present moment. What’s inside is knowledge, experience: the past. What’s outside has yet to be experienced. The knife’s edge is so fine that you can live either in the past or in the future. The real trick,” says Davidson, “is to live on the edge.”
― John Vaillant, quote from The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed
“When Caroline Walker fell in love with Julian English she was a little tired of him. That was in the summer of 1926, one of the most unimportant years in the history of the United States, and the year in which Caroline Walker was sure her life had reached a pinnacle of uselessness.”
― John O'Hara, quote from Appointment in Samarra
“Explosion without an objective', declared Miles Blundell, 'is politics in its purest form'.”
― Thomas Pynchon, quote from Against the Day
“I’d been staying at the Holiday Inn with my girlfriend, honestly the most beautiful woman I’d even known, for three days under a phony name, shooting heroin. We made love in the bed, ate steaks at the restaurant, shot up in the john, puked, cried, accused one another, begged of one another, forgave, promised, and carried one another to heaven.”
― Denis Johnson, quote from Jesus' Son
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.