“Incredible the animal that first dreamed of another animal.”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra
“Normality; show me normality, señor caballero, and I will show you an exception to the abnormal order of the universe; show me a normal event and I shall call it miraculous because it is normal.”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra
“Since I neither want not can influence the events of the world, my mission is to preserve the internal integrity and equilibrium of my mind; that will be in which the manor in which I recover the purity of the original act; I shall be my own citadel, and to it I shall retire to protect myself against a hostile and corrupt world. I shall be my own citadel and, within it, my own and only citizen.”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra
“The mystery of other individuals, señor caballero, is ordinarily grief we neither share nor understand.”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra
“all that was left to me was certain images and all of them spoke to me of the collapse of a cruel world and the slow construction in its stead of another world, equally cruel.”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra
“Power does not alter a man's character. It merely reveals it.”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra
“But reason... tells us that merely with repetition the extraordinary becomes ordinary, and only briefly abandoned, what had once passed for a common and ordinary occurrence becomes a portent:”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra
“It is true that every mountain has four faces, and one tends to know but one.
― Carlos Fuentes, Terra Nostra”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra
“He himself felt defeated because he was fighting against something he did not hate, because he did not understand the fratricidal hatred between the sons of Araby and Israel, and because he loved and knew and appreciated and wanted to save the merits of their cultures, although not the cruelty of their powers; he knew and loved the fountains and the gardens and the patios and high towers of al-Andalus, the nature that has been made more beautiful by man for man's pleasure, not for his mortification.”
― Carlos Fuentes, quote from Terra Nostra
“There was... her capacity to believe. There was as well her capacity to be deceived, since you can't have one without the other...”
― Alice McDermott, quote from Charming Billy
“Why in the world would someone say, 'I can't afford it' or 'I can't do it' to something they want? Why would someone deny themselves the things they want? It makes no logical sense.”
― Robert T. Kiyosaki, quote from Rich Dad's Retire Young, Retire Rich: How to Get Rich Quickly and Stay Rich Forever!
“I'm not made to philosophize, I don't have the heart for it. My heart is more like a machine for making blood to be spilled in a knife fight...”
― Camilo José Cela, quote from The Family of Pascual Duarte
“God isn't fooled by mercenary goodness I told myself and went back to manic smiling.”
― Janice Galloway, quote from The Trick is to Keep Breathing
“Indians only needed so many implements and decorations. If a tribe drove three hundred buffalo over a cliff, they wouldn’t feel obligated to make twenty-four hundred buffalo-hoof spoons and six hundred buffalo-horn charcoal carriers. Rather, they might just take the meat and hides from the best-looking female buffalo, those that weren’t too smashed up or buried under other buffalo. That might be all they touched. After all, their time and energy had value, just as ours does.”
― quote from American Buffalo: In Search of a Lost Icon
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.