“We make enemies, sometimes through no fault of our own, and sometimes our enemies become badges of honor.”
― quote from The Divorce Papers
“I know I’m a difficult parent, bruised and bruising.”
― quote from The Divorce Papers
“functions of a caretaking parent, such as bathing and putting her to bed at night, making doctors’ appointments for her and taking her there, arranging playdates and parties for her, attending school conferences, coaching her at sports, providing her with religious education, making her meals, buying her clothes, and the like.”
― quote from The Divorce Papers
“I don't want anyone else but sometimes, surprisingly, there's someone, not the prettiest or the most available, but you know that in another life it would be her. Or him, don't you find? A small quickening. The room responds slightly to being entered. Like a raised blind. Nothing intended, and a long way from doing anything, but you catch the glint of being someone else's possibility, and it's a sort of politeness to show you haven't missed it, so you push it a little, well within safety, but there's that sense of a promise almost being made in the touching and kissing without which no one can seem to say good morning in this poney business and one more push would do it.
-The Real Thing (London 1982), p.73
Today, I bought a copy of the play at the co-op, I thought I should send it to you- out of a sort of politeness.”
― quote from The Divorce Papers
“the 5 basic food groups: fat, salt, sugar, alcohol, tobacco):”
― quote from The Divorce Papers
“Our marriage ended because I couldn’t make him see me or hear me or do anything I wanted or needed. I could only be as selfish and mean as he was to get his attention. And that was ruinous.”
― quote from The Divorce Papers
“Is this flesh of yours you? Or is it an extraneous something possessed by you? Your body—what is it? A machine for converting stimuli into reactions. Stimuli and reactions are remembered. They constitute experience. Then you are in your consciousness these experiences. You are at any moment what you are thinking at that moment. Your I is both subject and object; it predicates things of itself and is the things predicated. The thinker is the thought, the knower is what is known, the possessor is the things possessed. "After all, as you know well, man is a flux of states of consciousness, a flow of passing thoughts, each thought of self another self, a myriad thoughts, a myriad selves, a continual becoming but never being, a will-of-the-wisp flitting of ghosts in ghostland. But this, man will not accept of himself. He refuses to accept his own passing. He will not pass. He will live again if he has to die to do it. "He shuffles atoms and jets of light, remotest nebulae, drips of water, prick-points of sensation, slime-oozings and cosmic bulks, all mixed with pearls of faith, love of woman, imagined dignities, frightened surmises, and pompous arrogances, and of the stuff builds himself an immortality to startle the heavens and baffle the immensities. He squirms on his dunghill, and like a child lost in the dark among goblins, calls to the gods that he is their younger brother, a prisoner of the quick that is destined to be as free as they—monuments of egotism reared by the epiphenomena; dreams and the dust of dreams, that vanish when the dreamer vanishes and are no more when he is not.”
― Jack London, quote from John Barleycorn: Alcoholic Memoirs
“I am going to die, her brain recited calmly. I am going to be stabbed until I am died. How infuriating. I have so much left to do.”
― Claire Legrand, quote from The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls
“The hostage hours had blurred into one another, anonymous as a line of smashed pumpkins.”
― Laura London, quote from The Windflower
“My father's hand found the door locked. His calls to my mother went unanswered. He beat with his fists and called out her name, again and again, tears burning from his eyes. By the time I had come in the front door, the cake in my arms, he had broken his way in and discovered she was dead.”
― Niall Williams, quote from Four Letters of Love
“You have a God who hears you, the power of love behind you, the Holy Spirit within you, and all of heaven ahead of you. If you have the Shepherd, you have grace for every sin, direction for every turn, a candle for every corner, and an anchor for every storm. You have”
― Max Lucado, quote from Traveling Light: Releasing the Burdens You Were Never Intended to Bear
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.