Quotes from The Devil Tree

“I'm sure there are aspects of my personality buried within me that will surface as soon as I know I am completely loved.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“When people claim to know who I am, I can no longer act freely.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“So this is insanity. How interesting. What happens next?”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“I was pushing myself to extremes in order to discover my many selves.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“As a child I used to lie on the floor with my eyes tightly closed and hope that people would walk past without noticing me. That would mean I was truly invisible.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“There's a place beyond words where experience first occurs to which I always want to return.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“I have always suspected everyone who likes me of having poor judgment. I despise them for being so easily taken in.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“The recent Dictionary of Occupational Titles lists over twenty thousand specialized professions in America; being a millionaire is not one of them.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“Our language has lost its ability to convey the spontaneous.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“There is serenity and calm under the water's surface. You move easily and glimpse a world you have never seen before. You think of running out of oxygen and the idea of sharks dart out at you. You sense that there is something treacherous hiding behind every reef; no matter how much you explore you won't ever know what it is.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“Do you realize that one out of every four Americans is unbalanced? Think of your three closest friends. If they seem normal, then you are the one.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“People prefer to avoid confronting deformity and when they do it's only for kicks.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“When I saw them in Africa, I thought these birds were the greatest fliers of all. Hardly beating their wings, they fly for hours, swooping upwards on air currents with no sign of physical effort. But when they land, they pitch forward on their stubby legs without stopping. They skid along on their bellies, their necks straining to absorb the shock of the landing. Their beaks dig into the sand and they collide with anything in their path. Quite often they break their wings or beaks or spines and remain for the rest of their lives in the scrubby thickets not far from where they crash. The crippled birds sit there blind, paralyzed or in shock, and struggle slowly back and forth to their nests. Some hop on one leg, some drag their crippled wings behind them like broken umbrellas. I wonder whether they ever envy their brothers soaring in the air or if they're glad to be grounded and past their trial.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“Living is an arbitrary matter and I have every right to renounce it.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“My cynicism continuously undermines her faith in her own ability to master her moods.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“She protected herself by making herself believe no-one else could ever really understand her.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“Of all mammals, only a human being can say 'no.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“The native calls the baobab 'the devil tree' because he claims that the devil, getting tangled in its branches, punished by the tree by reversing it. To the native, the roots are branches now, and the branches are roots. To ensure that there would be no more baobabs, the devil destroyed all the young ones.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“As a boy I got the idea that death was an animal which lay curled inside waiting to swallow us.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“I deserve no punishment at all for being who I am.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“At first I was afraid that I would be left defenseless, that I would babble aloud the things I've always been terrified of saying. Instead, opium made me realize that I could say anything I liked without losing my identity.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“I remember how, as a boy, I used to collect the cork tips of my father's cigarettes and stick them in my stamp albums. I believed they contained his unspoken words, which one day would explain everything. I have not changed. Now I explore my memories, trying to discover the substructure hidden beneath my past actions, searching for the link to connect them all.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“Karen told me about an old woman who was the last surviving inhabitant of one of the Hermit Islands. She was the only one left who could speak her tribe's language, but the anthropologists didn't realize it and never bothered to learn it from her. When the old woman died, the language died with her.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“No big corporation would promote a hunchback.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“We know our lives are chaotic, but we insist that everything happen in an orderly way and be logically conceived.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“He had found the one calm place in the midst of the storm, a quiet voice calling him to earth.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“That's why she keeps her nails long, she says, to be able to scratch and claw.”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

“ruined chimneys rose above masses of broken bricks”
― Jerzy Kosiński, quote from The Devil Tree

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Popular quotes

“Where beliefs are not checked against facts, but instead facts must meet the test of consonance with the prevailing vision, we are in the process of sealing ourselves off from feedback from reality.Heedless of the past, we are flying blind into the future.”
― Thomas Sowell, quote from Black Rednecks and White Liberals

“We healed each other,” Lexi said, without removing her attention from her husband. “We were both lost and knocked down, but we held on tight, and raised each other from the ashes. He brought me my rainbow, Elsie,” she huffed a loving laugh and said, “he brought me the stars.”

I didn’t know what that reference meant, but I could feel the magnitude of what he meant to her. Lexi slipped out of the car and I did too. I walked to the back gate, staying out of sight. I glanced back, seeing Austin, with his gang tattoos and intimidating stature, taking Lexi in his arms and pressing a soft kiss on her mouth.”
― Tillie Cole, quote from Sweet Soul

“Then, just as we were to leave on a whirlwind honeymoon in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, a call came from Australia. Steve’s friend John Stainton had word that a big croc had been frequenting areas too close to civilization, and someone had been taking potshots at him.
“It’s a big one, Stevo, maybe fourteen or fifteen feet,” John said over the phone. “I hate to catch you right at this moment, but they’re going to kill him unless he gets relocated.”
John was one of Australia’s award-winning documentary filmmakers. He and Steve had met in the late 1980s, when Steve would help John shoot commercials that required a zoo animal like a lizard or a turtle. But their friendship did not really take off until 1990, when an Australian beer company hired John to film a tricky shot involving a crocodile.
He called Steve. “They want a bloke to toss a coldie to another bloke, but a croc comes out of the water and snatches at it. The guy grabs the beer right in front of the croc’s jaws. You think that’s doable?”
“Sure, mate, no problem at all,” Steve said with his usual confidence. “Only one thing, it has to be my hand in front of the croc.”
John agreed. He journeyed up to the zoo to film the commercial. It was the first time he had seen Steve on his own turf, and he was impressed. He was even more impressed when the croc shoot went off flawlessly.
Monty, the saltwater crocodile, lay partially submerged in his pool. An actor fetched a coldie from the esky and tossed it toward Steve. As Steve’s hand went above Monty’s head, the crocodile lunged upward in a food response. On film it looked like the croc was about to snatch the can--which Steve caught right in front of his jaws. John was extremely impressed. As he left the zoo after completing the commercial shoot, Steve gave him a collection of VHS tapes.
Steve had shot the videotapes himself. The raw footage came from Steve simply propping his camera in a tree, or jamming it into the mud, and filming himself single-handedly catching crocs.
John watched the tapes when he got home to Brisbane. He told me later that what he saw was unbelievable. “It was three hours of captivating film and I watched it straight through, twice,” John recalled to me. “It was Steve. The camera loved him.”
He rang up his contacts in television and explained that he had a hot property. The programmers couldn’t use Steve’s original VHS footage, but one of them had a better idea. He gave John the green light to shoot his own documentary of Steve.
That led to John Stainton’s call to Oregon on the eve of our honeymoon.
“I know it’s not the best timing, mate,” John said, “but we could take a crew and film a documentary of you rescuing this crocodile.”
Steve turned to me. Honeymoon or crocodile? For him, it wasn’t much of a quandary. But what about me?”
“Let’s go,” I replied.”
― Terri Irwin, quote from Steve & Me

“Sore loser? You bet your fuckin' ass! What on earth is wrong with being a sore loser? It shows you cared about whatever the contest was in the first place. Fuck losing graciously-that's for chumps. And losers, by the way.”
― George Carlin, quote from When Will Jesus Bring the Pork Chops?

“Dora sat on a corner of the spread rug, longing to be assigned some task so she could resent it.”
― Shirley Hazzard, quote from The Transit of Venus

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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.