Quotes from The 19th Wife

David Ebershoff ·  514 pages

Rating: (51.4K votes)


“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


About the author

David Ebershoff
Born place: Los Angeles, CA, The United States
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“[The skeet tournament] It's a competition that I've entered – and won – every year since I was thirteen.
And here's the thing – it really pisses them off. All these hunting boys and their daddies show up decked out in camo gear, determined to beat the girl who has the audacity to challenge their masculinity.
And, okay, I'll admit it … I like to needle 'em just a bit. I purposely wear the girliest outfit possible – little flowery sundresses with cowboy boots, most years. Drives 'em nuts. If they're going to be beaten by a girl, they'd rather it be some tomboy wearing overalls and a flannel shirt, you know? Stupid sexist pigs.---(Jenna Cafferty)”
― Kristi Cook, quote from Magnolia


“It may well be that by trickery of priests men have sometimes taken a mortal's voice for a god's. But it will not work the other way. No one who hears a god's voice takes it for a man's.”
― C.S. Lewis, quote from Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold


“Sleep, she said. Sleep while you can. Forget where you are and forget the mountain of days. Each one enormous, lost in some forest that never ends, but then the edge will fold back and you'll walk on what was the sky and is now only another forest floor, another layer, and you can feel the weight of hundreds of these layers above you.”
― David Vann, quote from Aquarium


“Invest in yourself. You get OUT what you put IN.”
― quote from Grace, Not Perfection: Embracing Simplicity, Celebrating Joy


“was the only halo I ever wanted again, a circle of wicked wants and devilish delights.”
― Sierra Simone, quote from Priest


Interesting books

Winter's Passage
(22.3K)
Winter's Passage
by Julie Kagawa
The Last of the Wine
(3.6K)
The Last of the Wine
by Mary Renault
A Handful of Dust
(20.1K)
A Handful of Dust
by Evelyn Waugh
The Magic
(10.6K)
The Magic
by Rhonda Byrne
This is All: The Pillow Book of Cordelia Kenn
(1.9K)
This is All: The Pil...
by Aidan Chambers
Once
(17.2K)
Once
by Anna Carey

About BookQuoters

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.