“I smiled at her, but she didn’t smile back. Sometimes pain likes to be alone.”
― Peter Monn, quote from The Before Now and After Then
“Maybe, just maybe, the perfection of the world was found in the imperfection.”
― Peter Monn, quote from The Before Now and After Then
“That's the thing about parents. They ask what you think, but they don't really care, or at least they don't care enough to let it affect the outcome.”
― Peter Monn, quote from The Before Now and After Then
“Sometimes it was easier to stay and suffer for the short term than to have a permanent scar reminding you of the past.”
― Peter Monn, quote from The Before Now and After Then
“He had never seemed breakable before, but in that moment, he was entirely fragile, and there was something beautiful in his sadness; something raw.”
― Peter Monn, quote from The Before Now and After Then
“And then I would cry, because even though boys don’t cry, I did.”
― Peter Monn, quote from The Before Now and After Then
“I think it’s funny how people say what dead people would want, as if they would know.”
― Peter Monn, quote from The Before Now and After Then
“Parents always thought if they could get on your level then that allowed them secret passage into your world when in reality, they were just manipulating you the whole time.”
― Peter Monn, quote from The Before Now and After Then
“Eventually, the Pat's of this world forgot about you and moved on to someone else. The worst part was that deep down inside, you knew that there was a truth to everything they said. And even if that truth wasn't bad or good, they still owned part of it. They owned a piece of you.”
― Peter Monn, quote from The Before Now and After Then
Peter Monn
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“There is truth in stories,” said Arthur. “There is truth in one of your paintings, boy or in a sunset or a couplet from Homer. Fiction is truth, even if it is not a fact. If you believe only in facts and forget stories, your brain will live, but your heart will die.”
― Cassandra Clare, quote from Lord of Shadows
“Existen palabras que, semejantes a las trompetas, a los címbalos o al bombo de los titiriteros, atraen siempre al público. Las palabras belleza, gloria, poesía, poseen un sortilegio que seduce incluso a los espíritus más toscos.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from Lost Illusions
“Chang-bo took to his bed, or rather to the quilts on the floor that was all they had left. His legs swelled up like balloons with what Mrs. Song had come to recognize as edema — fluid retention brought on by starvation. He talked incessantly about food. He spoke of the tofu soups his mother made him as a child and an unusually delicious meal of steamed crab with ginger that Mrs. Song had cooked for him when they were newlyweds. He had an uncanny ability to remember details of dishes she had cooked decades earlier. He was sweetly sentimental, even romantic, when he spoke about their meals together. He would take her hand in his own, his eyes wet and cloudy with the mist of his memories.
“Come, darling. Let’s go to a good restaurant and order a nice bottle of wine,” he told his wife one morning when they were stirring on the blankets. They hadn’t eaten in three days. Mrs. Song looked at her husband with alarm, worried that he was hallucinating.
She ran out the door to the market, moving fast and forgetting all about the pain in her back. She was determined to steal, beg — whatever it took — to get some food for her husband. She spotted her older sister selling noodles. Her sister wasn’t faring well — her skin was flaked just like Chang-bo’s from malnutrition — so Mrs. Song had resisted asking her for help, but now she was desperate, and of course, her sister couldn’t refuse.
“I’ll pay you back,” Mrs. Song promised as she ran back home, the adrenaline pumping her legs.
Chang-bo was curled up on his side under the blanket. Mrs. Song called his name. When he didn’t respond, she went to turn him over — it wasn’t diffcult now that he had lost so much weight, but his legs and arms were stiff and got in the way.
Mrs. Song pounded and pounded on his chest, screaming for help even as she knew it was too late.”
― Barbara Demick, quote from Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea
“I guess not being ‘just like them’ is a crime.”
― Lisa De Jong, quote from When It Rains
“He whispered, "I'm going to eat you until you scream."
~Dragos”
― Thea Harrison, quote from Dragon Bound
Moll Flanders
Speak, Memory
Blue Noon
Martin Chuzzlewit
Son of a Witch
Tick TockBookQuoters 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.
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