“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
David Ebershoff
Born place: Los Angeles, CA, The United States
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“We’re having such a hard time, Daddy,” she told him. “Everyone’s so miserable without you. I just want so badly for things to go back to the way they were.”
― Jennifer Jaynes, quote from Never Smile at Strangers
“Don't show emotion." Kurt Löwe gave his son a rough shake, "Don't you ever show emotion. Tears are weakness. And I won't have any son of mine being weak. You're going to stand here until you top crying.”
― Ryan Graudin, quote from Blood for Blood
“I couldn't claim that I was smarter than sixty-five other guys--but the average of sixty-five other guys, certainly!”
― Richard Feynman, quote from Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman! Adventures of a Curious Character
“That’s the problem with all of us. We’ve never time to think about the past, and we’re always planning for the future. And since the future’s always the future, we never live in the present.”
― L.E. Modesitt Jr., quote from The Parafaith War
“When you read the account of a murder - or, say, a fiction story based on murder - you usually begin with the murder itself. That's all wrong. The murder begins a long time beforehand. A murder is the culmination of a lot of different circumstances, all converging at a given moment at a given point. People are brought into it from different parts of the globe and for unforeseen reasons. [...] The murder itself is the end of the story. It's Zero Hour.”
He paused.
“It's Zero Hour now.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from Towards Zero
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The Three Theban Pla...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.
