“That's how birthdays were in our house. All hateful charades of pretty clothes, expensive presents, and ugly words . . .”
― Debbie Howells, quote from The Bones of You
“I discover, too, that grief is different to different people. Comes in many guises. In shocked silences and closed doors around our village, as people try to shut it out. That a blank face or fleeting smile can hide the worst, most private kind of agony.”
― Debbie Howells, quote from The Bones of You
Debbie Howells
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“Lucy’s Rules to Live By:
1. Make the conscious decision to look at others with an open mind and an open heart.
2. Everybody needs someone in their life they can rely on. Try to be that person.
3. Take a chance.
4. Love whole-heartedly.
5. Make it your goal to make someone smile daily.
6. Always expect more of yourself today than you did yesterday.
7. No matter how many times you’re let down, continue believing in the goodness of others.”
― Cheryl McIntyre, quote from Before Now
“In his endless journeys of exploration, crawling on all fours around the Urals and the Amazon and the Australian archipelagos which the furniture of the house was to him, sometimes he no longer knew where he was. And he would be found under the sink in the kitchen, ecstatically observing a patrol of cockroaches as if they were wild colts on the prairie. He even recognized a ttar in a gob of spit.
But nothing had the power to make him rejoice as much as Nino's presence. It seemed that, in his opinion, Nino concentrated in himself the total festivity of the world, which everywhere else was to be found scattered and divided. For in Giuseppe's eyes, Nino represented by himself all the myriad colors, and the glow of fireworks, and every species of fantastic and lovable animal, and carnival shows. Mysteriously, he could sense Nino's arrival from the moment when he began the ascent of the stairs! And he would hurry immediately, as fast as he could with his method, toward the entrance, repeating ino ino, in an almost dramatic rejoicing of all his limbs. At times, even, when Nino came home late at night, he, sleeping, would stir slightly at the sound of the key, and with a trusting little smile he would murmur in a faint voice: Ino.”
― Elsa Morante, quote from History
“War thoughts again. I think back to the business cards from that health shop earlier on. I think about miniature wars that individuals fight all the time. They fight against cellulite, or negative emotions, or addictions, or stress. I think about how we can now hire all different sorts of mercenaries to help us fight against ourselves…Therapists, manicurists, hairdressers, personal trainers, life coaches. But what’s it all for? What do all these little wars achieve? Although it is a part of my life too, and I want to be thin and pretty and not laughed at in the street and not so stressed and mad that I start screaming on the tube, it suddenly seems a little bit ridiculous. All the time we do these things we are trying to enlist ourselves into a bigger war. We are trying to join up, constantly, with the enemy.
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Hitler tried to impose his shiny, blonde, neat, sparkling world on us all and we resisted. So how is it that when McDonald’s and Disney and The Gap and L’Oreal and all the others try to do the same thing we all just say, ‘OK’? Hitler needed marketing, that’s all. His propaganda was, of course, brilliant for its time, everyone knows that. What a great idea, to make people feel that they belong to something, that their identity makes them special. If Hilter had bee able to enlist a twenty-first-century marketing department, would he have been able to sell Nazism to everyone? Why not? You can just see a beautiful, thin woman with her long blonde hair moving softly in the breezes, and the tagline ‘Because I’m worth it’.”
― Scarlett Thomas, quote from PopCo
“Enthusiasts for empire argued that Rome had a civilizing mission; that because her values and institutions were self-evidently superior to those of barbarians, she had a duty to propagate them; that only once the whole globe had been subjected to her rule could there be a universal peace.”
― Tom Holland, quote from Rubicon: The Last Years of the Roman Republic
“What we need more than anything, Amy, is each other. I need you, baby. I need you alive and well, in my bed and in my life. The idea of losing you is torture, but I know you aren’t my property. You’re the woman who changed me in ways I don’t even fully understand.”
― Lisa Renee Jones, quote from Infinite Possibilities
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A Year of Biblical W...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.
