Quotes from The Butterfly Garden

“Some people stay broken. Some pick up the pieces and put them back together with all the sharp edges showing.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“What choice are you making, Desmond?”
“I don’t think I’m making any choice right now.”
“Then you’re automatically making the wrong ones.” He straightened, mouth open to protest, but I held up my hand. “Not making a choice is a choice. Neutrality is a concept, not a fact. No one actually gets to live their lives that way.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“I think a trauma doesn’t stop just because you’ve been rescued.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“My secrets are old friends; I would feel like a poor friend if I abandoned them now.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“Listen to what isn’t being said.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“Not making a choice is a choice. Neutrality is a concept, not a fact.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“Beauty loses its meaning when you’re surrounded by too much of it.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“Some wanted the freedom to be anyone they wanted, some of us wanted the freedom to be left alone.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“Sometimes you can look at a wedding and realize with a certain sense of resignation that any children produced in that marriage will inevitably be fucked up and fucked over. It’s a fact, not a sense of foreboding so much as a grim acceptance that these two people should not—but definitely will—reproduce.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“And that stupid little girl stood in the winter and kept lighting matches to catch glimpses of families that weren’t—could never be—hers and froze to death in those harsh moments of reality between matches, because even though matches can burn, they’re light, not heat.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“You seem to have this strange image of me as a lost child, like I’ve just been thrown on the side of the road like garbage, or roadkill, but kids like me? We’re not lost. We may be the only ones who never are. We always know exactly where we are and where we can go. And where we can’t.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“The trouble with sociopaths, really, is that you never know where they draw their boundaries.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“If you don’t look at the bad thing, the bad thing can’t see you, right?”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“Let's call me a shadow child, overlooked rather than broken. I'm the teddy bear gathering dust bunnies under the bed, not the one-legged soldier.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“I’m not a fake person; I’m carefully and genuinely handcrafted.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“If you’ve seen enough, you just look older, no matter what the rest of your face looks like.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“The gifts we give say as much about us as the gifts we get and keep,”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“So not only was I self-sufficient, I came to have a pretty low opinion of most people’s intelligence.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“Taki and Karen had it, their daughter and her wife had it. But each time I saw it, I knew I was in the presence of something extraordinary, something that not everyone found or was capable of recognizing and sustaining.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“In terror she spoke, letting sink her wings till they trailed in the dust—in agony sobbed, letting sink her plumes till they trailed in the dust—till they sorrowfully trailed in the dust. But my wings couldn’t move and I couldn’t fly, and I couldn’t even cry. All that was left to me was the terror and the agony and the sorrow.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“Like beauty, desperation and fear were as common as breathing.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“My name is Rachel,” she whispered against my skin. “Rachel Young. Will you remember?”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“At night, the creature that was the Garden peeled back its synthetic skin to show the skeleton beneath.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“If you expect to be overlooked or forgotten, you’re always at least a little surprised when someone remembers you. You’re always outside understanding those strange creatures who actually expect people to remember and come back.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“New York has so much history, but everyone in it just wants to know about the future.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“I knew better than that. Like throwing away well-intentioned phone numbers, I knew better than to ask for things I clearly couldn’t have.
“Can this one camera be disabled without another one going up in its place?” I asked promptly, and watched shock pass across his shadowed face.
“No cameras, no mics?”
"That’s it?”
“It would be nice to have one place that’s genuinely private,” I explained with a shrug. It almost felt strange to have my hair shifting across my back and shoulders with the gesture. “You can see us everywhere else we go, even watch us on the toilet if you had a wish to. Having just a single place devoid of cameras would be beneficial. A mental-health exercise, in a way.”
He watched me for a long time before answering. “Something that benefits all of you.”
“Yes.”
“I tell you to ask for anything, and you ask for something that benefits all of you.”
“It benefits me too.” He laughed again and reached for me, pulling me against his chest so he could kiss me. His hands moved over the fastenings of my dress, and as he lowered me to the mist-damp stone, I closed my eyes and let my thoughts drift off to Annabel Lee and her grave in the kingdom by the sea. I didn’t think angels would ever be jealous of me.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“and I thought how fucking unfair it was that he made us butterflies, of all things. Real butterflies could fly away, out of reach. The Gardener’s Butterflies could only ever fall, and that but rarely.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“Someone is just dead!” said the little girl; for her old grandmother, the only person who had loved her, and who was now no more, had told her, that when a star falls, a soul ascends to God. And that stupid little girl stood in the winter and kept lighting matches to catch glimpses of families that weren’t—could never be—hers and froze to death in those harsh moments of reality between matches, because even though matches can burn, they’re light, not heat.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“What wasn’t known was created, what wasn’t created eventually ceased to matter.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

“Not making a choice is a choice. Neutrality is a concept, not a fact. No one actually gets to live their lives that way.”
― Dot Hutchison, quote from The Butterfly Garden

About the author

Popular quotes

“Our legislators have not yet learned the comparative value of free-trade and of freedom, of union, and of rectitude, to a nation. They have no genius or talent for comparatively humble questions of taxation and finance, commerce and manufacturers and agriculture.

Nuestros legisladores no han aprendido todavía el valor comparativo del libre cambio y la libertad, la unión y la rectitud hacia la nación. No tienen genio ni talento para hacerse preguntas humildes sobre impuestos y finanzas, comercio, manufactura y agricultura.”
― Henry David Thoreau, quote from Civil Disobedience and Other Essays

“And at once he went on with his burden, as though afraid that he might already have said too much in this country where the past was sharp splinters embedded in men's minds and an ill-judged word a false step in the dark.”
― Richard Adams, quote from Shardik

“The lack of goodness in the young gun's heart was oxygen to the fire, and so he burned for a good long while before I woke. The dream stoked my faith in the judgment and justice that will come someday or this afternoon soon. I turn up the collar of my white robe, relieved to know that God's got me covered 'cause I'm good, but not that good.”
― Nikki Grimes, quote from Bronx Masquerade

“The modern hero is the outsider. His experience is rootless. He can go anywhere. He belongs nowhere. Being alien to nothing, he ends up being alienated from any type of community based on common tastes and interests. The borders of his country are the sides of his skull.”
― Flannery O'Connor, quote from Collected Works: Wise Blood / A Good Man is Hard to Find / The Violent Bear it Away / Everything that Rises Must Converge / Essays and Letters

“Last time she had been here, the room had been pastel, romantic and soft. Now it was icily white. It was urban, out of a slick magazine, as if some cold, successful woman lived here with two possessions and an empty refrigerator.”
― Caroline B. Cooney, quote from The Voice on the Radio

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

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.