Quotes from The Basketball Diaries

Jim Carroll ·  224 pages

Rating: (25.6K votes)


“It was a dream, not a nightmare, a beautiful dream I could never imagine in a thousand nods. There was a girl next to me who wasn't beautiful until she smiled and I felt that smile come at me in heat waves following, soaking through my body and out my finger tips in shafts of color and I knew somewhere in the world, somewhere, that there was love for me.”
― Jim Carroll, quote from The Basketball Diaries


“Little kids shoot marbles
where the branches break the sun

into graceful shafts of light…
I just want to be pure.”
― Jim Carroll, quote from The Basketball Diaries


“they're fucking up minds they do not own.”
― Jim Carroll, quote from The Basketball Diaries


“To sit in this awful mess and maybe smoke some dope and watch some innocuous shit on a dumb glass tube and feel fine about it and know there's really nothing you have to do, ever, but feel your warm friend's silent content. You don't feel guilty about not fighting a war or carrying signs to protest it either. We've just mastered the life of doing nothing, which when you think about it, may be the hardest thing of all to do.”
― Jim Carroll, quote from The Basketball Diaries


“It was in Central Park near the lake and I watched a weeping willow turn into a giant rooster and fly off. No tree remained. It glided beautifully into the sky, a big blue barnyard. My mind went with it, something all you bald head generals and wheelchair senators could never imagine.”
― Jim Carroll, quote from The Basketball Diaries



About the author

Jim Carroll
Born place: in New York, New York, The United States
Born date August 1, 1950
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“For if rice and tuna was his for-guests meal, Ceony couldn’t imagine what the man ate when he dined alone. Perhaps Mg. Aviosky had assigned her here merely to ensure England’s oddest paper magician got some decent nutrition and didn’t wither away, leaving the country with only eleven paper magicians instead of twelve.”
― Charlie N. Holmberg, quote from The Paper Magician


“The water moves on, a little faster than before, yet still the great river flows. It is as fluid and unpredictable in its moods as it has ever been, but it meanders within familiar banks.”
― William Dalrymple, quote from Nine Lives


“Ah, the Serenity Prayer. “God grant me the serenity To accept the things I cannot change; Courage to change the things I can . . .” For some reason, reciting it never leaves me feeling very serene.”
― Catherine McKenzie, quote from Spin


“Boredom is not black licorice, Snicket," she said. "There's no reason to share it with me.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from When Did You See Her Last?


“We got to the moment when I wake up from being "mostly dead" and say: "I'll beat you both apart! I'll take you both together!", Fezzik cups my mouth with his hand, and answers his own question to Inigo as to how long it might be before Miracle Max's pill begins to take effect by stating: "I guess not very long."
As soon as he delivered that line, there issued forth from Andre' one of the most monumental farts any of us had ever heard. Now I suppose you wouldn't expect a man of Andre's proportions to pass gas quietly or unobtrusively, but this particular one was truly epic, a veritable symphony of gastric distress that roared for more than several seconds and shook the very foundations of the wood and plaster set were now grabbing on to out of sheer fear. It was long enough and loud enough that every member of the crew had time to stop what they were doing and take notice. All I can say is that it was a wind that could have held up in comparison to the one Slim Pickens emitted int eh campfire scene in Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles, widely acknowledged as the champion of all cinematic farts.
Except of course, this one wasn't in the script.”
― Cary Elwes, quote from As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride


Interesting books

Krik? Krak!
(6.3K)
Krik? Krak!
by Edwidge Danticat
The Professor
(15.1K)
The Professor
by Charlotte Brontë
You Can Heal Your Life
(52.2K)
You Can Heal Your Li...
by Louise L. Hay
Disney at Dawn
(10.3K)
Disney at Dawn
by Ridley Pearson
Until Nico
(24.1K)
Until Nico
by Aurora Rose Reynolds
The Conquest of Happiness
(6.9K)
The Conquest of Happ...
by Bertrand Russell

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.