“Tessa distinguished absolutely between pain observed and pain shared. Pain observed is journalistic pain. It’s diplomatic pain. It’s television pain, over as soon as you switch off your beastly set. Those who watch suffering and do nothing about it, in her book, were little better than those who inflicted it. They were the bad Samaritans.”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“The most peaceble people will do the most terrible things when they're pushed.”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“In a civilized country you can never tell.”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“Why am I despising you when I'm about to change your life?”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“You're history, Donohue. You think countries run the fucking world! Go back to fucking Sunday school. It's 'God save our multinational' they're singing these days.”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“He sees passion in her gray eyes, and it scares him as all passion scares him, his own included.”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“Pain observed is journalistic pain. It's diplomatic pain. It's television pain, over as soon as you switch off your beastly set.”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“Arseholes who are expert at making something out of nothing [...] appeared equally capable of making nothing out of something”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“more cruelly: he feared her faith because, as a fully paid-up pessimist, he knew he had none.”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“Over them, in a swaying, muddy mist, hung the flies, snoring on a single note.”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
“I do not betray the confidence of friends and I require you to respect that fact and admire me for it. Enormously and all the time. Where secrets are concerned, compared to me, the grave is a chatterbox”
― John le Carré, quote from The Constant Gardener
John le Carré
Born place: in Poole, Dorset, England, The United Kingdom
Born date October 19, 1931
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“It is all connected Dominick," she said. "Life is not a series of isolated ponds & puddles; life is this river you see below, before you. It flows from the past through the present on it's way to the future.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from I Know This Much Is True
“She moaned into her pillow. "Go away. I feel like dying."
"No fair maiden should die alone," he said, putting a hand on hers. "Shall I read to you in your final moments? What story would you like?"
She snatched her hand back. "How about the story of the idiotic prince who won't leave the assassin alone?"
"Oh! I love that story! It has such a happy ending, too—why, the assassin was really feigning her illness in order to get the prince's attention! Who would have guessed it? Such a clever girl. And the bedroom scene is so lovely—it's worth reading through all of their ceaseless banter!”
― Sarah J. Maas, quote from Throne of Glass
“Sometimes the embers are better than the campfire.”
― Stephen King, quote from The Green Mile
“I know what you are learning to endure. There is nothing to be done. Make sure nothing is wasted. Take notes. Remember it all, every insult, every tear. Tattoo it on the inside of your mind. In life, knowledge of poisons is essential. I've told you, nobody becomes an artist unless they have to.”
― Janet Fitch, quote from White Oleander
“I really can't think about kissing when I've got a rebellion to incite. ”
― Suzanne Collins, quote from Catching Fire
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Black Rednecks and 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.
