“People throw the word love around like confetti when they actually mean affection.”
― Robert Cormier, quote from Tenderness
“I don't mean to be insolent. I'm truthful. I tell the truth and the truth sometimes hurts. For instance, you have bad breath, Lieutenant. I can smell it from here. It must offend a lot of people. That's the truth. But how many people have told you that? Instead, they either lie or try to avoid your company.”
― Robert Cormier, quote from Tenderness
“...pain reaches a certain point and does not get worse but remains in all its intensity and you can survive it.”
― Robert Cormier, quote from Tenderness
“Mr. Sinclair once asked the class to make a list of the ten most beautiful words in the English language, and the only word that really seemed beautiful to me was tenderness.”
― Robert Cormier, quote from Tenderness
“Pluck my heart
From my flesh
And eat it.....”
― Robert Cormier, quote from Tenderness
“Eat my heart
Chew it hard
Swallow my soul, too”
― Robert Cormier, quote from Tenderness
“Eric Poole began with cats. Or, to be more exact, kittens.”
― Robert Cormier, quote from Tenderness
“He looks at me fondly. I know that the look doesn’t have love in it. Or even lust. I still wonder about love or sex or lust. I saw lust in his eyes when he looked at that girl on the sidewalk … I love him, anyway. I love him because he’s kind to me and he doesn’t want my body, doesn’t want to feel me or touch me, like all the others … and maybe after a while he might look at me with more than fondness, will kiss me sweetly, tenderly.”
― Robert Cormier, quote from Tenderness
“A smile for all the stupid people out there with bleeding hearts for serial killers.”
― Robert Cormier, quote from Tenderness
“I’ve dropped out of their hearts like a little sparrow fallen from its nest. So gather me up, dear, fold me to your heart – and you’ll see how nice I can be.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre, quote from No Exit and Three Other Plays
“The strangest thing about humans is the way they pair up, males and females. Constantly at war with each other, never content to leave each other alone. They never seem to grasp the idea that males and females are separate species with completely different needs and desires, forced to come together only to reproduce
Of course you feel that way. Your mates are nothing but mindless drones, extensions of yourself, without their own identity.
We know out lovers with perfect understanding. Humans invent an imaginary lover and put that mask over the face of the body in their bed.
That is the tradegy of language, my friend. Those who know each other only through symbolic representations are forced to imagine each other. And because their imagination is imperfect, they are often wrong,
This is the source of their misery.
And some of their strength, I think. Your people and mine, each for their own evolutionary reasons, mate with vastly unequal partners. Our mates are always, hopelessly, our intellectual inferiors. Humans mate with beings who challenge their supremcy. They have conflicts between mates, not because their communication is inferior to ours, but because they commune with each other at all.”
― Orson Scott Card, quote from Xenocide
“Standing in front of him I wipe his liquid from the corner of my mouth and stare deeply. I can see the panic in his eyes. I can smell his fear, deep, rich and growing, and for the first time tonight I’m actually aroused.”
― Dennis Sharpe, quote from Blood & Spirits
“The price of this story was the audience's innocence.”
― Tom Rob Smith, quote from Child 44
“Julius Tallow was a fool. He appeared complacent, but like a weak swimmer out of his depth, his legs were kicking frantically under the surface, trying to keep him afloat. Whatever happened, Nathaniel did not intend to sink with him.”
― Jonathan Stroud, quote from The Golem's Eye
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.