“No matter what you do, someone always knew you would.”
“If women lose the right to say where and how they birth their children, then they will have lost something that's as dear to life as breathing.”
“How a mother comes to love her child, her caring at all for this thing that's made her heavy, lopsided and slow, this thing that made her wish she were dead ... that's the miracle.”
“Miss B. says, "It's a mama's faith what keeps her children right. I'm not talkin' 'bout the churchgoin' kind, neither. Miss Mabel's got faith in goodness. Tell me you can't help but believe in it too just by lookin' at her.”
“It’s a disgusting mess we come through to be born, the sticky-wet of blood and afterbirth, mother wailing, child crying … the helpless soft spot at the top of its head pulsing, waiting to be kissed. Our parents and teachers say it’s a miracle, but it’s not. It’s going to happen no matter what, there’s no choice in the matter. To my mind, a miracle is something that could go one way or another. The fact that something happens, when by all rights it shouldn’t, is what makes us take notice, it’s what saints are made of, it takes the breath away. How a mother comes to love her child, her caring at all for this thing that’s made her heavy, lopsided and slow, this thing that made her wish she were dead … that’s the miracle.”
“If women lose the right to say where and how they birth their children, then they will have lost something that’s as dear to life as breathing.”
“Aunt Fran lowered her voice. "Her cold is just the start of a greater sickness. These 'stories,' as you call them, will only lead her to more pain."
"Fran, talk plain, will you?"
"I'm talking about derangement."
"Don't be silly!"
She wispered. "And deviant behaviours.”
“No matter what you do—somebody, somewheres, knew that you would.”
“Sin has many tools, but a lie has a handle to fit them all.”
“Kissin’ the dirt’s the only way you’ll see heaven.”
“Each morning you set your sights on the tasks ahead and hope that when the day is done you’re farther along than when you started.”
“I ask myself, is it just a wild flight of imagination to conceive of a world without war … but someone must try … ” Julia Grace Wales”
“How a mother comes to love her child, her caring at all for this thing that’s made her heavy, lopsided and slow, this thing that made her wish she were dead … that’s the miracle.”
“Yes,” Abelard said finally. “You are a fractured snowflake, a pattern repeated in infinite detail in a world full of salt crystals. You’re not broken—you’re perfect.” Perfect. Some tight, hard shell around my heart cracked open. I hadn’t even known I’d walled my heart away from this terrible world.”
“Of course, you only live one life, and you make all your mistakes, and learn what not to do, and that’s the end of you.”
“You should employ your little grey cells”
“One can forgive Shakespeare anything, except one's own bad lines.”
“Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the great documenter of the slave-labour-camp horrors of the latter, once wrote that the “pitiful ideology” holding that “human beings are created for happiness” was an ideology “done in by the first blow of the work assigner’s cudgel.”
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.