“Evil is relative…You can’t hang a sign on it. You can’t touch it or taste it or cut it with a sword. Evil depends on where you are standing, pointing your indicting finger.”
“If one chooses sides on emotion then the rebel is the guy to go with. He is fighting for everything men claim to honour, freedom, independance, truth, the right.......all the subjective illusions. All the eternal trigger words. We are minions of the villan of the piece. We confess the illusion and deny the substance.”
“Any man who barely sustains an armistice with himself has no business poking around in an alien soul.”
“Consider little children. There are not many of them not cute and lovable and precious, sweet as whipped honey and butter. So where do all the wicked people come from?”
“Only a conquerer bothers to honor a fallen foe.”
“You who come after me, scribbling these Annals, by now realize that I shy off portraying the whole truth about our band of blackguards. You know they are vicious, violent, and ignorant. They are complete barbarians, living out their cruelest fantasies, their behavior tempered only by the presence of a few decent men. I do not often show that side because these men are my brethren, my family, and I was taught young not to speak ill of kin. The old lessons die hardest.”
“I was my usual charming morning self, threatening blood feud with anyone fool enough to disturb my dreams.”
“Still, the best augurs are those who divine from the portents of the past. They compile phenomenal records.”
“Ah, the smell of mystery and dark doings, of skulduggery and revenge. The meat of a good tale.”
“I damned myself for my earlier romanticism. That Croaker who had come north, so thoroughly bemused by the mysterious Lady, was another man. A stripling, filled with the foolish ignorances of youth. Yeah. Sometimes you lie to yourself just to keep going.”
“One endured with humble dignity the consequences of youthful folly.”
“The price of order,” I muttered. I tried to run the dog off. It wouldn’t budge.
“The cost of chaos,” Tom-Tom countered. Thump on his drum. “Not quite the same thing, Croaker.”
“A herd of minuscule lightning bugs poured out of One-Eye's nostrils. Good soldiers all, they fell into formation, spelling out the words Goblin is a Poof.”
“Back to the company. Back to business. Back to the parade of years. Back to the annals. Back to fear.”
“Nevertheless, four hours after dawn they began dying for their cause.”
“Closer at hand, the wheeling gulls were as surly and lackadaisical as the day promised to make most men.”
“The Hanged Man stopped gesturing and struck a pose: man listening.”
“One-Eye’s handicap in no way impairs his marvelous hindsight. Lightning”
“Okay, Croaker. What the hell happened?”
“I don't know. The falling sickness?”
“Give him some of his own soup,” somebody suggested. “Serve him right.” A tin cup appeared. We forced its contents down his throat.
His eye clicked open. “What are you trying to do? Poison me? Feh! What was that? Boiled sewage?”
“Your soup,” I told him.”
“I could wish to spy the nakedness of their hearts, and through the different disguises of customs, climates, and religion, find out what is good in them, to fashion my own by. It is for this reason that I have not seen the Palais Royal - nor the facade of the Louvre - nor have attempted to swell the catalogues we have of pictures, statues, and churches - I conceive every fair being as a temple, and would rather enter in, and see the original drawings and loose sketches hung up in it, than the Transfiguration of Raphael itself.”
“The whole time I was growing up...living in this house...Papa was like a shadow that followed you everywhere.
...It would wrap around you and lay there until you couldn't tell which one was you anymore.”
“I put my palm on my belly. "I'm hungry."
His eyes bulged. "You're-? What is wrong with you?"
"This form is strange to me.”
“As rash as he, she capitulated with indecent speed, gave herself up to his plundering mouth and tongue, wanting what he wanted, wanting more. Wanting his love; wanting what she could never have.”
“You will never gain anyone's approval by begging for it. When you stand confident in your own worth, respect follows.”
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.