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

“There is truth, my boy. But the doctrine you desire, absolute, perfect dogma that alone provides wisdom, does not exist. Nor should you long for a perfect doctrine, my friend. Rather, you should long for the perfection of yourself. The deity is within you, not in ideas and books. Truth is lived, not taught.”
― Hermann Hesse, quote from The Glass Bead Game

“Bring him back to me,' he told them.”
― Madeline Miller, quote from The Song of Achilles

“She turned so they were face-to-face and gave him back the words he'd offered her their first night together: "I survived. Isn't that what matters?”
― Melissa Marr, quote from Ink Exchange

“How fast the ears learned to tell what sounds meant, much faster than it took the eyes to decipher written words.”
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“She couldn’t stop watching his eyes. They were bright black, surrounded by an incredible network of lines, like a laboratory maze for studying intelligence in tears. They seemed to know what she wanted, even if she didn’t.”
― Thomas Pynchon, quote from The Crying of Lot 49

Interesting books

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.