“I have spent too much of my life opening doors for cats—I once calculated that, since the dawn of civilization, nine hundred and seventy-eight man-centuries have been used up that way. I could show you figures.”
“Nothing could go wrong because nothing had...I meant "nothing would." No - Then I quit trying to phrase it, realizing that if time travel ever became widespread, English grammar was going to have to add a whole new set of tenses to describe reflexive situations - conjugations that would make the French literary tenses and the Latin historical tenses look simple.”
“When railroading time comes you can railroad—but not before.”
“That was smart, that was engineering: never reinvent something that you can buy down the street.”
“I was not in bad health (aside from a cumulative hangover), I was still on the right side of thirty by a few days, and I was far from being broke. No police were looking for me, nor any husbands, nor any process servers; there was nothing wrong that a slight case of amnesia would not have cured.
But there was winter in my heart and I was looking for the door to summer. If I sound like a man with an acute case of self-pity, you are correct. There must have been well over two billion people on this planet in worse shape than I was. Nevertheless, I was looking for the Door into Summer.”
“I had taken a partner once before-but, damnation, no matter how many times you get your fingers burned, you have to trust people. Otherwise you are a hermit in a cave, sleeping with one eye open.”
“I am not sentimental about kids. Little monsters, most of them, who don’t civilize until they are grown and sometimes not then.”
“You can die anyplace. They’ve never managed to regulate that.”
“Anywhere is home to the man with a fat bank account—the cops leave him alone.”
“These people who deal in fancification to fool the public think nobody can read and write but themselves.”
“Engineering is the art of the practical and depends more on the total state of the art than it does on the individual engineer. When railroading time comes you can railroad—but not before.”
“There wasn’t any way to be safe; just being alive was deadly dangerous...fatal, in the end.”
“There’s a divinity that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will.” Free will and predestination in one sentence and both true.”
“Angeles was safe from invasion; the invaders wouldn’t find a place to park—I”
“I wanted us to get out of production. Jake Schmidt, our production shop master, was a good man; nevertheless I was forever being jerked out of a warm creative fog to straighten out bugs in production—which is like being dumped out of a warm bed into ice water. This was the real reason why I had been doing so much nightwork and staying away from the shop in the daytime.”
“joking. A slave needs privileges to keep him quiet.”
“-Brindemos por la raza femenina, Pet… ¡Encuéntralas y olvídalas!”
“But I gathered that it was classified...by order of this Colonel, uh, Plushbottom.” “Thrushbotham. Thrushbotham, sir. A fat, fatuous, flatulent, foot-kissing fool incompetent to find his hat with it nailed to his head. Which it should have been.”
“Брать взаймы – всё равно что плыть с камнем на шее.”
“Мудрый человек должен быть в любое время готов остаться ни с чем.”
“Belle was not only a perfect secretary and office manager, she also had personal specs which would have delighted Praxiteles and a fragrance which affected me the way catnip does Pete.”
“I'm going to cover the whole world like it was a neighborhood, and in airplanes and raing cars, not on foot!”
“One minute I was playing chess and doing maths all the time, the next I had been rerouted into more 'normal' girls' activities: reading, writing stories and worrying about my clothes.”
“The fish fanciers, sitting by their ponds and gazing into their depths, were tracing shadows darker than they understood.”
“You are my other half, Amy. I have to protect you.”
“And then an endless instant later Arthur was kissing him back, like this was perfectly normal, like this was exactly what Arthur had been hoping for most in all the world, his large hands closing over Merlin's shoulders and sliding down over his back, strong and warm even through the fabric of his sweater, one hand pausing on his waist and the other sliding around to cup his arse and pull him in closer. Merlin made a surprised, enthusiastic sound and stopped holding back; let himself cling to Arthur and kiss him more fiercely; and then they were kissing like it was their last day on earth and they had to cram every possible moment of passion into this tiny slice of time, hands clutching at fabric, mouths pressing hungry bites onto bare skin as if they would somehow devour one another, trying to touch and taste everything at once, frantic and needy and bursting with urgent desire and the inescapable knowledge that this was finite, was stolen, was not supposed to be.”
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.