“And so a person can never promise to love someone forever because you never know what might come up, what terrible thing the person you love might do.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Testimony
“A single action can cause a life to veer off in a direction it was never meant to go. Falling in love can do that, you think. And so can a wild party. You marvel at the way each has the power to forever alter an individual's compass. And it is the knowing that such a thing can so easily happen, as you did not know before, not really, that has fundamentally changed you and your son.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Testimony
“I guess that's the point of drinking, to take all the feelings and thoughts and morals away until you are just a body doing what a body will do.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Testimony
“If one has a good reputation and trusted, the rules can be bent to accommodate.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Testimony
“His arrival detonated two sheepdogs that began barking even before they emerged at a dead run from behind the garage. ”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Testimony
“I discover that it is possible to be angry with someone who has died. It is possible to hate yourself for being angry with someone who has died. It is possible to believe that you will die from grief, that somehow your breathing will catch itself up and simply stop. It is possible to believe that you could have stopped the terrible thing that happened at any time, if only you had known.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Testimony
“The lying started in the eighth grade. Possibly it had begun earlier, and I simply hadn’t noticed.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Testimony
“If you suspect a problem, there is a problem. Don’t let them get away with even the very first lie. Be vigilant.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Testimony
“What's the matter with you anyway?" Riesenfeld shouts "You look like a moon-struck kangaroo!”
― Erich Maria Remarque, quote from The Black Obelisk
“And he saw it in her eyes. Still. The belief that there could be someone other than herself. You, he wanted to shout. You. No one but you. Stupid, stupid girl.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from Froi of the Exiles
“It exasperated her to think that the dungeon in which she had languished for so many unhappy years had been unlocked all the time, and that the impulses she had so carefully struggled with and stifled for the sake of keeping well with society, were precisely those by which alone she could have come into any sort of sincere human contact.”
― George Bernard Shaw, quote from Pygmalion
“When I face the desolate impossibility of writing five hundred pages, a sick sense of failure falls on me, and I know I can never do it. Then gradually, I write one page and then another. One day's work is all I can permit myself to contemplate.”
― John Steinbeck, quote from Travels with Charley: In Search of America
“Forgive us our trespasses,” says Margarethe, “and get out of our way.”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from Confessions of an Ugly Stepsister
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.