“There were the endless birthday nights and New Year's Eves of just you in your bed and no one else. There was the welling up at weddings, the glittery eye-prick, when all the couples would get up to dance. Sometimes it felt like your heart was crazed with cracks like your grandmother's old saucers. Sometimes the sight of a Saturday afternoon couple laughing in a park would splinter it completely.”
― Nikki Gemmell, quote from The Bride Stripped Bare
“You're living your days at the moment how a sheep grazes, meandering, not engaged with anything much.”
― Nikki Gemmell, quote from The Bride Stripped Bare
“An emptiness rules at its core, a rottenness, a silence when one of you retires to bed without saying good night, when you eat together without conversation, when the phone's passed wordlessly to the other. An emptiness when every night you lie in the double bed, restlessly awake, astounded at how closely hate can nudge against love, can wind around it sinuously like a cat. An emptiness when you realize that the loneliest you've ever been is within a marriage, as a wife.”
― Nikki Gemmell, quote from The Bride Stripped Bare
“No one except your husband knows of the cautiousness at the heart of your life. Your adulthood has been a progressive retreat from curiosity and wonder, an endless series of delays and procrastinations. You wanted to be so much, once, but life kept on getting in the way... You settled. Shunned creativity, flight, risk, never had the courage to give a dream, any dream, a go.”
― Nikki Gemmell, quote from The Bride Stripped Bare
“Alone you're refinding a glittering, a clarity, you're finding your distilled self. ...You think of the two types of aloneness you've known recently: this wonderful, sparkly, soul-refreshing type, and the despairing loneliness that sucks the breath from your life.”
― Nikki Gemmell, quote from The Bride Stripped Bare
“...no matter how much Theo achieves and acquires and out-dazzles everyone else, she never seems content. She's taught you that people who shine more lavishly that everyone else seem to be penalized by discontent, as if they're being punished for craving a brighter life. I've been knocked down so many times I can't remember the number plates, she said once.”
― Nikki Gemmell, quote from The Bride Stripped Bare
“You don't dare to think ahead too much, for you don't want this melted under the heat of your attention, don't want it gone from your life.”
― Nikki Gemmell, quote from The Bride Stripped Bare
“Striding, finally, into the solitude. You feel as if part of your body has been ripped from you, as if flesh has been torn from flesh. But you feel powerful too, for you're free, after so long; the great burden of uncertainty, and guilt, has gone.
But then the anger comes.
At all the times in the past you've said I love you and felt stripped. All the times they never rang back. All the love affairs that evaporated, bleakly, into one-night stands. All the times they've drowned you out. Drained your energy. Your confidence. Stood you up. Walked out. Wanted a Chinese girl next.”
― Nikki Gemmell, quote from The Bride Stripped Bare
“You know in this moment that Gabriel is at your mercy, you can do what you want, he is completely yours and with the knowledge of that something goes,you can feel it slip from you like a fish through the net.”
― Nikki Gemmell, quote from The Bride Stripped Bare
“You feel you're learning everything about love as you watch him, from the other side. He imagines you leaving your cozy London world for a man in his thirties who has no real job, who still travels on buses, who's never found a firm footing with his life. The poet, the dreamer, and you would have fallen for it once. But you're too old, now. You just want to fuck.”
― Nikki Gemmell, quote from The Bride Stripped Bare
“So, he feels now, that he doesn't have to try. And you want him more than you ever have before.”
― Nikki Gemmell, quote from The Bride Stripped Bare
“What is the shocking weakness in virtually every man you know well? The whimpering like children when they're ill. The need for women to ask directions for them. Help shop for their clothes. Book appointments for their hair to be cut because they don't care to speak for themselves. The inability to pick up a phone if they want a relationship to stop. Are the weaknesses you see again and again a symptom of men in this age, or have they always been there, and women, secretly, have always known?”
― Nikki Gemmell, quote from The Bride Stripped Bare
“You feel something you haven't for years: it's to do with university parties with bathtubs of alcohol and the smell of hamburgers on fingers and beer in a kiss. You should have been disgusted by all that but you weren't. You'd be wet so quick; to get their clothes off, to have their weight upon you, to be rammed against a wall with your leg curled up.”
― Nikki Gemmell, quote from The Bride Stripped Bare
“Dar a inceput sa te plictiseasca traiul in mijlocul panzei de fantezii pe care ai tesut-o de-a lungul timpului. Caci un barbat adevarat s-a prins in ea si a inceput sa traga de firele ei de matase.”
― Nikki Gemmell, quote from The Bride Stripped Bare
Nikki Gemmell
Born place: Wollongong, Australia
See more on GoodReads
“Destiny isn't a path any cat follows blindly. It is always a matter of choice, and sometimes the heart speaks loudest. Listen to your heart, because that's where your true destiny lies.”
― Erin Hunter, quote from Sign of the Moon
“Um, excuse me…” I hear a man’s voice.
“She’s all right,” Rami says. “She’s with me. She’s my friend. She’s just a bit upset.”
I feel a hand on my shoulder. “Are you all right, miss?”
I drag my hands away from my face and look up into an unfamiliar bearded face. “Do you know this man?” the stranger asks me.
“Y-yes,” I gasp.
“That’s all right then.” He pats me on the shoulder. “There’s a hospital just down the road if you need help,” I hear him tell Rami.
“Thanks,” Rami replies.
“I guess it doesn’t look too good, me wrestling on the pavement with a screaming girl,” Rami says, a smile in his voice.”
― Tabitha Suzuma, quote from A Voice in the Distance
“Autumn air is good for the lungs.”
― Silas House, quote from A Parchment of Leaves
“You’ll never be just anything. A tsunami can never be ‘just’ a wave.”
“Get off my chin.”
“I like that about you. Waves are banal. Tsunamis reshape the Earth. Under the right circumstances, even entire civilizations.”
I blink.
“You’re going to be one hell of a woman one day, Dani.”
― Karen Marie Moning, quote from Iced
“These were colours he'd never ever seen before; ones he couldn't possibly begin to name. Here, to his left, was a wooden clock, and it was painted, well not exactly green, but a colour that green might like to be if it had any imagination at all. And over there, beside the wooden board game whose overriding colour was not red, but something that red might look at enviously, blushing with embarrassment at its own dull appearance. And the wooden letter sets, well, there were those who might have said that they were painted yellow and blue, but they would have said this knowing that such plain words were an outrageous insult to the colouring on the letters themselves.”
― John Boyne, quote from Noah Barleywater Runs Away
After the Blue Hour
Saving Grace
Vicious
Blood Vow
TsugumiBookQuoters 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.
