“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 are a million reasons why I love you. A million reasons that all begin with the amazing woman you are and end with the type of man you make me want to be.”
― Natalie Ward, quote from Losing Me Finding You
“It was my mother, my frequent co-conspirator in the kitchen and my conduit to our past, who suggested the means to convey this epic disjunction, this unruly collision of collectivist myths and personal antimyths. We would reconstruct every decade of Soviet history - from the prequel 1910s to the postscript present day - through the prism of food. Together, we'd embark on a yearlong journey unlike any other: eating and cooking our way through decade after decade of Soviet life, using her kitchen and dining room as a time machine and an incubator of memories. Memories of wartime rationing cards and grotesque shared kitchens in communal apartments. Of Lenin's bloody grain requisitioning and Stalin's table manners. Of Khrushchev's kitchen debates and Gorbachev's disastrous antialcohol policies. Of food as the focal point of our everyday lives, and - despite all the deprivations and shortages - of compulsive hospitality and poignant, improbable feasts.”
― Anya von Bremzen, quote from Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing
“في المدرسة حذرتموني: احترس بكلامك! فلما أخبرتكم أن معلمي صديقي، همستم: لعله عين عليك! ولما سمعت حكاية الطنطورة فلعنتهم، همستم في أذني: احترس بكلامك!
فلما لعنوني:
احترس بكلامك!
وحين اجتمعت بأقراني، لنعلن إضرابا، قالوا لي، هم أيضا:
احترس بكلامك!
وفي الصباح قلتِ لي، يا أماه: إنك تتكلم في منامك، فاحترس بكلامك في منامك!.. وكنت أدندن في الحمام، فصاح بي أبي: غير هذا اللحن. إن للجدران آذانا، فاحترس بكلامك!
أريد ألا أحترس بكلامي، مرة واحدة!
كنت أختنق!
ضيق هذا الكهف يا أمّاه، لكنه أرحب من حياتكم!
مسدود هذا الكهف يا أماه، ولكنه منفذ!”
― quote from The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist
“And yet we spend so much time and effort and energy on those résumé entries—entries that lose all significance as soon as our heart stops beating.”
― Arianna Huffington, quote from Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder
“the preserver on one side and the destroyer on the other.”
― Jack Campbell, quote from Valiant
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.