“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
“If poisons were ponies, I'd put my money on cyanide.”
― Alan Bradley, quote from The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie
“I don’t know what it is. I simply can’t stand it. It’s like a hand reaching out of the dark. It is fear—blind fear as if it were lying in wait somewhere for me.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, quote from Arch of Triumph: A Novel of a Man Without a Country
“Foaly twitched his tail contentedly. Genius. No point in being humble about it.”
― Eoin Colfer, quote from The Arctic Incident
“She started shaping the face, using a wire loop to gently carve the slope of the strong forehead and brow, then the nose and the lean angle of the cheekbones. In little time, her fingers were moving on automatic pilot, her mind disengaged and gone into its own flow, her subconscious directly commanding her hands into action.
She didn’t know how long she’d been working, but when the hard rap sounded on her apartment door some time later, Tess nearly jumped out of her skin. Sleeping next to her feet on the rug, Harvard woke up with a grunt.
“You expecting someone?” she asked quietly as she got up from her stool.
God, she must have been really zoned out while she was sculpting, because she’d seriously messed up around the mouth area of the piece. The lips were curled back in some kind of snarl, and the teeth . . .
The knock sounded again, followed by a deep voice that went through her like a bolt of electricity.
“Tess? Are you there?”
Dante.
Tess’s eyes flew wide, then squeezed into a wince as she did a quick mental inventory of her appearance. Hair flung up into a careless knot on top of her head, braless in her white thermal Henley and faded red sweats that had more than one dried clay smudge on them. Not exactly fit for company.
“Dante?” she asked, stalling for time and just wanting to be sure her ears weren’t playing tricks on her. “Is that you?”
“Yeah. Can I come in?”
“Um, sure. Just a sec,” she called out, trying to sound casual as she threw a dry work cloth over her sculpture and quickly checked her face in the reflection off one of her putty spatulas.
Oh, lovely. She had a slightly crazed, starving-artist look going on. Very glamorous. That’ll teach him to do the pop-in visit, she thought, as she padded over to the door and twisted the dead bolt.”
― Lara Adrian, quote from Kiss of Crimson
“Weet je wat misschien het vreselijkste is van alle gezegden? "De tijd heelt alle wonden". Maar het is waar. Er blijft altijd een litteken, dat misschien pijn doet als het weer omslaat; maar de wond is op een dag geheeld. Als jongen van een jaar of acht ben ik eens gestruikeld met zon gebogen, puntig nagelschaartje in mijn handen, dat drong diep in mijn knie en ik weet nog precies hoe ik gilde van de pijn. Net als iedereen heb ik dus een litteken op mijn knie, maar ik zou je nu niet kunnen zeggen, op welke. Jij hebt beslist ook littekens, waarvan je je de wonden niet meer kunt herinneren. Daar zit toch iets afschuwelijks in. Dat betekent toch, dat die wonden er achteraf evengoed niet geweest hadden kunnen zijn.”
― Harry Mulisch, quote from The Discovery of Heaven
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.