“Last year when my grandma fell and broke her hip she couldn't paint her toenails anymore. So my grandpa started doing it for her, even after he fell and broke his hip, too. For me, that's love.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“I trust you have seen the ocean. If you have, then you have witnessed the divine. How barren the ground is in comparison! If I could count the hours I have spent staring out at it! And yet those hours never feel lost. I cannot imagine how else I could refill them were I given a second chance.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“I must say a few words about memory. It is full of holes. If you were to lay it out upon a table, it would resemble a scrap of lace. I am a lover of history . . . [but] history has one flaw. It is a subjective art, no less so than poetry or music. . . . The historian writes a truth. The memoirist writes a truth. The novelist writes a truth. And so on. My mother, we both know, wrote a truth in The 19th Wife– a truth that corresponded to her memory and desires. It is not the truth, certainly not. But a truth, yes . . . Her book is a fact. It remains so, even if it is snowflaked with holes.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“Faith, I tell them, is a mystery, elusive to many, and never easy to explain.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“Isn't it interesting what a stranger can offer? A little wisdom, a little mercy, a little love.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“Do you know what I miss most about Rosemary? Simply knowing she was there.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“I suppose my greatest disappointment has been realizing my father, like Joseph and Brigham before him, tried to shroud his passions in the mantle of religion. He used God to defend his adultery. --- Ann Eliza Young, page 253”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“There is nothing more alarming to a boy than seeing a mother, or a father, buckling. It says to him that all will not be well. The boy does not know this, but he senses it, as a dog senses it, as a dog sense his master's true state of mind. (Lorenzo Dee)”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“What do I consider myself now? A man attempting to be good. In this endeavor I have no use for church and steeple. If another man does, I only wish he finds what he needs.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“Isn't a gay Mormon like an oxymoron?'
'Do I look like an oxymoron to you?'
'An oxymormon.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“You will loose everything"
"I already have.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“I, of course, cherish my freedom, but I shall never want my freedom to restrict the freedom of another. In that case then I am not truly free, and none of us is truly free.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“My duty, I know, is to lead. I cannot offer an array of options. I must offer a long but narrow path to Salvation, and guide the Saints down it. Were that path wide and varied, it would lead nowhere; and I will then have failed both God and man.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“Upon the exposure of his bribery, it is reported he said, “I should have paid more.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“Faith, I tell them, is a mystery, elusive to many and never easy to explain”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“I write not for sensation, but for Truth. I leave judgement to the hearts of my good Readers everywhere.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“Under what circumstances does such outrage thrive? The territory of Utah, glorious as it may be, spiked by granite peaks and red jasper rocks, cut by echoing canyons and ravines, spread upon a wide basin of gamma grass and wandering streams, this land of blowing snow and sand, of iron, copper, and the great salten sea.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“Under some Divine plan, it seems Destiny intended these two noble creatures to be united in either matrimony or warfare, if there is a difference. As the battle begins, we shall mount our hill with somber hearts to watch out over the carnage.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“Sometimes when you’re driving down a back road in Utah, you think if there is a God, then he probably had something to do with all of this. It’s just that fucking beautiful.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“I wish I could claim I faced my first day of apostasy with courage and certainty. Yet in truth, I had never felt more afraid.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“Love and trust are Siamese twins, as conjoined as Chang and Eng.”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“It's not a happy ending!" she wept, as Elena stared at her, dumbfounded. "It will never be a happy ending! How can I possibly have a happy ending when I am going to have to spend the rest of my life without the creature I love?"
Elena blinked at her, as did virtually everyone else in the courtyard.
"You did say 'creature,' am I correct?" Elena asked cautiously. "And you do mean-"
But she had already run across the courtyard and flung herself at Peri's neck, wrapping both arms around it. "I mean I am in love with Periapt," she cried, sobbing. "And I don't care who knows it! He's clever, he's wise, he's kind and gentle, he's noble-"
And to her shock and amazement, Peri let out a bellow that sounded positively heartbroken.
"I will never love anyone but you!" he cried. "I swear, I will never take a mate if it can't be you, and I don't care if they exile me from the clan forever for that. Let them exile me!" He shook his head violently as he looked down at her. "If only you could be a dragon, or make me human!" he cried, curving his neck around her and holding her close.
Andie wept on, consumed with despair. "I will never, ever, ever find someone I love as much as you.”
― Mercedes Lackey, quote from One Good Knight
“If I had to guess, nephew, I would surmise that you are not in direct trouble as such. However, I will confess to the distinct and unsettling feeling that very large, very ponderous and most momentous wheels have been set in motion. When that happens I believe the lessons of history tend to indicate that it is best not to be in their way. Even without meaning harm, the workings and progress of such wheels are on a scale which inevitably reduces the worth of individual lives to an irrelevance at best.”
― Iain M. Banks, quote from The Algebraist
“Luther King gave people “the feeling that they could be bigger and stronger and more courageous than they thought they could be,” Bayard Rustin said—in part because of the powerful new weapon, non-violent resistance, that had been forged on the Montgomery battlefield.”
― Robert A. Caro, quote from Master of the Senate
“fortify the bank of the Rhône for a distance of eighteen miles between the Lake of Geneva and the Jura, the frontier between the Helvetii and the Sequani. This was effected by means of a rampart sixteen feet high with a trench running parallel. He then placed redoubts at intervals along the fortification and garrisoned them with pickets,”
― Gaius Julius Caesar, quote from The Conquest of Gaul
“Death, decay, entropy, and destruction are the true suspensions of God's laws; miracles are the early glimpses of restoration.”
― Philip Yancey, quote from The Jesus I Never Knew
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.
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