“It changes you for ever, but you are changing for ever anyway.”
― Margaret Mahy, quote from The Changeover
“There are always two people involved in cruelty, aren't there? One to be vicious and someone to suffer! And what's the use of getting rid of - of wickedness, say - in the outside world if you let it creep back into things from inside you?”
― Margaret Mahy, quote from The Changeover
“Stamp, your name is to be Laura. I'm sharing my name with you. I'm putting my power into you and you must do my work. Don't listen to anyone but me. You are to be my command laid on my enemy. you'll make a hole in him through which he'll drip away until he runs dry. As he drips out darkness, we'll smile together, me inside, you outside. We'll crush him between our smiles.”
― Margaret Mahy, quote from The Changeover
“These were true things, Laura knew, but they were only part of the truth which was something less orderly than Kate made it sound. Some parts of the full, disorderly truth were lodged in Kate and Laura like splinters of corroding steel. Their feelings had grown around the sharp, wounding edges which didn't hurt anymore but were still there, fossils of pain laid down in the mixed-up strata of memory.”
― Margaret Mahy, quote from The Changeover
“Somewhere int he flesh of the earth the dreadful earthquake shuddered, the tide walked to and fro on the leash of the moon, rainbows formed, winds swept the sky like giant brooms piling up clouds before them, clouds which writhed into different shapes, melted into rain or darkened, bruised themselves against an unseen antagonist and went on their way, laced with forking rivers of lightning, complete with white electric tributaries. Out of this infinite vision an infinity of details could be drawn, but Sonny had settled on one, and from the endless series a particular beach was chosen and began to form around Laura - a beach of iron-dark sand and shells like frail stars, and a wonderful wide sea that stretched, neither green nor blue, but inked by the approach of night into violet and black, wrinkling with its own salty puzzles, right out to a distant, pure horizon.”
― Margaret Mahy, quote from The Changeover
“I always had to buy a book, even if I wasn't done with the one I was currently reading. I loved to read. I felt like the trun of each page echoed between the covers of the world inside them-and each book had its own rules. There, within the mystique of that connection, was something special, and I was an addict.”
― Aaron M. Patterson, quote from Airel: The Awakening
“Because I liked you better than it suits a girl to say,
It irked you and I promised to throw the thought away
To put the world between us, we parted stiff and dry
'Goodbye' and you: 'Forget me'.
'No fear I will' said I.
Now here where clover whitens
The dead man's knoll you pass
And now tall flower to meet you
Starts in the trefoiled grass
Halt by the headstone naming the heart no longer stirred
And say the girl that loved you
Was one who kept her word.”
― Regina Doman, quote from Waking Rose
“... my aim in writing The Watch That Ends the Night was not to present history. My aim was to present humanity. The people represented in this book lived and breathed and loved. They were as real as you or me. They could have been any one of us.”
― Allan Wolf, quote from The Watch That Ends the Night
“Don't pretend you don't like it when I treat you as a lady.”
“Maybe I don't.”
Despite that, he still opened the car door for me, with his lips curving up into a careless grin. “Girls always do that,” he said, “—pretend they think you're taking their independence from them if you open a door. But that's not the case.”
“Well, what is the case?” I sat down on the front seat—leaving my feet on the driveway.
“Simply that we're demonstrating good-breeding; showing the girl we're worthy and capable of taking care of her—that we're polite, considerate and nurturing.”
I folded my arms. “Women don't need nurturing—or to be taken care of. We can fend for ourselves. We're equal to men, you know.”
― Angela M. Hudson, quote from Tears of the Broken
“¡Qué graciosos son los hombres! Cuando quieren hacernos un cumplido dicen que tenemos una mentalidad masculina.”
― Jean Webster, quote from Dear Enemy
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.
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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.