“Yeah, well, wish in one hand, crap in the other, and see which fills up first”
― S.A. Bodeen, quote from The Compound
“My dad was never one of those dads you could ask for a quarter if you saw a gumball machine. Instead he had one of those black American Express cards not available to general public. Gumball machines didn’t have slots for those.”
― S.A. Bodeen, quote from The Compound
“Place unopened pouch in warm water for 5-10 minutes.
Unopened pouch may be laid on a warm surface.
Lay unopened pouch in direct sunlight. Not much chance of that down here.
Place unopened pouch inside you shirt, allow you body temperature to warm your MRE.
I was surprised they left out: Place unopened pouch on ground and pee on it.”
― S.A. Bodeen, quote from The Compound
“I would have rather had a dad with change jingling in his pocket; one who would have spent the last forty minutes of the world raking leaves for his kids to jump in, so that they perished in one loud, bright instant, giggles still bubbling up from their bellies, never suspecting a thing.
Yeah, well. Tough luck, rich boy.”
― S.A. Bodeen, quote from The Compound
“That night I dreamed of turduckens.”
― S.A. Bodeen, quote from The Compound
“What is a turducken? An exclusive culinary creation available by special order from some little Cajun town down south. Entirely deboned, a turducken consists of a turkey, stuffed with duck, stuffed with a chicken, like an edible Russian nesting doll. Some were stuffed with alligator, crap, shrimp; my favorite was the traditional cornbread variety.”
― S.A. Bodeen, quote from The Compound
“Most dads had hobbies that they passed down to their sons; hunting, fishing, auto repair. Dad’s hobby was nuclear war, which meant his sons knew everything about it.”
― S.A. Bodeen, quote from The Compound
“I called out in Mandarin, “Si san ba.” Years ago I’d told her it was an affectionate term for a “big sister.” I’d have to find a new phrase if she ever discovered what nasty word it actually meant.”
― S.A. Bodeen, quote from The Compound
“The people who didn’t eat meat wondered how to get out of partaking in what was obviously the pièce de résistance of the Rex Yanakakis Christmas Eve Dinner. The animal-rights people cringed, not wanting to voice their objections for fear of pissing off Clea Sheridan Yanakakis, who was very generous to their causes with her husband’s money. The people who did eat meat tried to ignore the jittery noncarnivores surrounding them.”
― S.A. Bodeen, quote from The Compound
“Building your dream home is a fast-track to divorce,”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from The Last Anniversary
“History is a narrative enterprise, and the telling of stories that are true, that affirm and explain our existence, is the fundamental task of the historian. But truth is delicate, and it has many enemies. Perhaps that is why, although we academics are supposedly in the business of pursuing the truth, the word “truth” is rarely uttered without hedges, adornments, and qualifications.
Every time we tell a story about a great atrocity, like the Holocaust or Pingfang, the forces of denial are always ready to pounce, to erase, to silence, to forget. History has always been difficult because of the delicacy of the truth, and denialists have always been able to resort to labeling the truth as fiction.
One has to be careful, whenever one tells a story about a great injustice. We are a species that loves narrative, but we have also been taught not to trust an individual speaker.
Yes, it is true that no nation, and no historian, can tell a story that completely encompasses every aspect of the truth. But it is not true that just because all narratives are constructed, that they are equally far from the truth. The Earth is neither a perfect sphere nor a flat disk, but the model of the sphere is much closer to the truth. Similarly, there are some narratives that are closer to the truth than others, and we must always try to tell a story that comes as close to the truth as is humanly possible.
The fact that we can never have complete, perfect knowledge does not absolve us of the moral duty to judge and to take a stand against evil.”
― Ken Liu, quote from The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
“she could write the world as she would, life would go on just as it had since the”
― K.M. Weiland, quote from Dreamlander
“Compared with music all communication by words is shameless; words dilute and brutalise; words depersonalise; words make the uncommon common.”
― quote from The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
“Human hearts are like noble little ants, able to carry so much more weight than you'd expect.”
― Emery Lord, quote from The Names They Gave Us
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.