Quotes from The Flanders Panel

“You don't choose your friends, they choose you, and you either reject them or you accept them without reservations.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from The Flanders Panel

“Chess is all about getting the king into check, you see. It's about killing the father. I would say that chess has more to do with the art of murder than it does with the art of war.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from The Flanders Panel

“[L]ife is like an expensive restaurant where, sooner or later, someone always hands you the bill, which is not to say that you should deny the joy and pleasure afforded by the dishes already eaten.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from The Flanders Panel

“I imagine he's married. Or was ... He seems damaged in the way that only we women can damage men.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from The Flanders Panel

“In affairs of the heart, Princess," César used to say, "one should offer neither advice nor solutions ... just a clean hanky when it seems appropriate.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from The Flanders Panel

“life is like an expensive restaurant where, sooner or later, someone always hands you the bill, which is not to say that you should deny the joy and pleasure afforded by the dishes already eaten.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from The Flanders Panel

“Sometimes," he said at last, as if it were an enormous effort to formulate his thoughts, "I wonder if chess is something man invented or if he merely discovered it. It's as if it were something that has always been there, since the beginning of the universe. Like whole numbers.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from The Flanders Panel

“And only when he'd finished and fallen silent did the vague smile return to his lips, in apparent gentle mockery of himself, of the man he had just described and for whom, deep down, he felt neither compassion nor disdain, only a kind of disillusioned, sympathetic solidarity.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from The Flanders Panel

“It's usually the father who teaches the child his first moves in the game. And the dream of any son who plays chess is to beat his father. To kill the king. Besides, it soon becomes evident in chess that the father, or the king, is the weakest piece on the board. He's under continual act, in constant need of protection, of such tactics as castling, and he can only move one square at a time. Paradoxically, the king is also indispensable. The king gives the game its name, since the word 'chess' derives from the Persian word shah meaning king, and is pretty much the same in most languages.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from The Flanders Panel

“Besides, life is a succession of events that link up with each other whether one wants them to or not.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from The Flanders Panel

“I would say that chess has more to do with the art of murder than it does with the art of war.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from The Flanders Panel

“At some point in his life, César had realised that no one ever learns from anyone else's mistakes and, consequently, there was only one dignified and proper attitude to be taken by a guardian - which, after all, was what he was - and that consisted in sitting down next to his young ward, taking her by the hand and listening, with infinite kindness, to the evolving story of her loves and griefs, whilst nature took its own wise and inevitable course.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from The Flanders Panel

“Y supo de mujeres capaces de desmontar con minuciosidad de relojero los resortes que mueven a un hombre.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from The Flanders Panel

“There are exactly the same things in a room at night as there are in the daytime; it's just that you can't see them.”
― Arturo Pérez-Reverte, quote from The Flanders Panel

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Popular quotes

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“Where there is great love there are always miracles,” he said at length. “One might almost say that an apparition is human vision corrected by divine love. I do not see you as you really are, Joseph; I see you through my affection for you. The Miracles of the Church seem to me to rest not so much upon faces or voices or healing power coming suddenly near to us from afar off, but upon our perceptions being made finer, so that for a moment our eyes can see and our ears can hear what is there about us always.”
― Willa Cather, quote from Death Comes for the Archbishop

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― Rachel Hartman, quote from Seraphina

“Perhaps there is really nothing else when everything is falling to pieces, I think, except this bit of togetherness and even that is a sweet deception, for when someone else really needs you you cannot follow him or stand by him. I have noticed that often enough in the war when I looked into the face of a dead comrade. Each one of us has his own death and must suffer it alone; no one can help him then.”
― Erich Maria Remarque, quote from The Black Obelisk

“What are you doing?" she asked, trying to raise herself.

"First, I thought I'd show you what a pity it would be if they cut off my wicked tongue.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from Froi of the Exiles

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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.