“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
“I just want to say, for the record, as far as Royal protectors go, you're not very good."
"It's my first day," Royce replied dryly.
"And already I am trapped in a timeless prison. I shudder to think what might have happened if you had a whole week.”
― Michael J. Sullivan, quote from The Crown Conspiracy
“What an extraordinary satisfaction there is in cleaning things! (Does the satisfaction depend on ownership? I suspect so.)”
― Iris Murdoch, quote from The Sea, the Sea
“All useful things have a price, and are bought only with money, as that is the way the world is run. You know without having to reason about it the price of a bale of cotton, or a quart of molasses. But no value has been put on human life; it is given to us free and taken without being paid for. What is it worth? If you look around, at times the value may seem to be little or nothing at all. Often after you have sweated and tried and things are not better for you, there comes a feeling deep down in the soul that you are not worth much.”
― Carson McCullers, quote from The Ballad of the Sad Café and Other Stories
“Diving is a leap of faith plus gravity.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Memoirs of a Teenage Amnesiac
“Wizard's Ninth Rule
A contradiction can not exist in reality. Not in part, nor in whole.”
― Terry Goodkind, quote from Chainfire
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.