“What good are laws that cannot be read or understood, or a tongue that spews only hatred or ignorance? What good is the written word to an illiterate man?”
― Delores Phillips, quote from The Darkest Child
“I wanna leave here myself. But when I leave, whether it's on a bus or train or in a pine box, somebody gon' know I was here.”
― Delores Phillips, quote from The Darkest Child
“She denied and feared God in the same breath. She allowed our actions to shame her, and yet was void of shame. I truly believed there was something unnatural about her - a madness only her children could see. My yearning was not to understand it, but to escape it.”
― Delores Phillips, quote from The Darkest Child
“Fear was a thing I understood all too well. It was a malignancy that had spread throughout my body until my mother, in her godly wisdom, had diagnosed and cauterized it.”
― Delores Phillips, quote from The Darkest Child
“Satan is not going to leave. The only way to get him out is to invite God in, and God is not welcome in my mother's house.”
― Delores Phillips, quote from The Darkest Child
“I touch my scar to remind myself that I am not a coward. I am a Quinn.”
― Delores Phillips, quote from The Darkest Child
“This bag is filled with nourishment for the mind and soul. What I have here, Tangy, are promises and hopes, as well as scattered disillusionments. It’s like filling your plate with ham, green beans, and potato salad, only to have someone come along and spoon lumpy, dried-out oatmeal on the side. Wouldn’t that spoil your appetite?”
― Delores Phillips, quote from The Darkest Child
“In the face of all reason she was interested in him as he was. Not as he wished he was.”
― C.S. Richardson, quote from The End of the Alphabet
“Turning back to embrace the past has been a long, slow lesson not only in self-esteem, but in patriotism—pride in homeland, heritage. It has taken a decade to whip the shame, to mispronounce words and shun grammar when mispronunciation and misspeaking are part of my dialect, to own the bad blood. What I come from has made me who I am.”
― Janisse Ray, quote from Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
“Nichtsdestotrotz habet Ihr starke Hände, ein Messer und eine Pistole, und es ist nicht schwer, ein Grab zu schaufeln.”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from Tales of the Cthulhu Mythos
“We start out in identical perfection: bright, reflective, full of sun. The accident of our lives bruises us into dirty individuality. We meet with grief. Our character dulls and tarnishes. We meet with guilt. We know, we know: the price of living is corruption. There isn’t as much light as there once was. In the grave we lapse back into undifferentiated sameness”
― Gregory Maguire, quote from A Lion Among Men
“Please be aware that your exam scores provide you only with your entrance into the school. They do not ensure your ability to stay.”
― Anne Osterlund, quote from Academy 7
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.