“Lemties neįmanoma įžvelgti, nebent jei sapnuoji ar esi apsvaigęs iš meilės.”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand
“Aren’t eccentricities fairly common among overachievers.”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand
“As for Dr. Zajac’s modest contribution to the ongoing pollution of the Charles River… well, let’s be fair… In his hopelessly old-fashioned opinion, a lot worse than dogshit was dumped into the Charles on daily basis.”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand
“And feeling like a failed sexual predator, because of pregnant Mary…”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand
“Americans are suckers for an English accent.”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand
“When they weren’t praying, they did what schoolgirls everywhere do. They laughed, they shrieked, they burst into hysterical sobs – all for no apparent reason…
The schoolgirls also played the worst Western music imaginable, and they took a surfeit of baths – so many baths that the traditional inn where Wallingford and Evelyn Arbuthnot stayed was repeatedly running out of hot water.”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand
“There is often a defining experience that marks any significant change in the course of a person’s life.”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand
“Was he nice? He didn’t know. He hoped he was, but how many of us truly know?”
― John Irving, quote from The Fourth Hand
“It is always sad to leave a place to which one knows one will never return. Such are the melancolies du voyage: perhaps they are one of the most rewarding things about traveling.”
― Gustave Flaubert, quote from Flaubert in Egypt: A Sensibility on Tour
“I expected, as I approached the corporate world, to enter a brisk, logical, nonsense-free zone, almost like the military - or a disciplined, up-to-date military anyway - in its focus on concrete results. How else would companies survive fierce competition? But what I encountered was a culture riven with assumptions unrelated to those that underlie the fact- and logic-based worlds of, say science and journalism - a culture addicted to untested habits, paralyzed by conformity, and shot through with magical thinking.”
― Barbara Ehrenreich, quote from Bait and Switch: The (Futile) Pursuit of the American Dream
“Angry? Yes, I'm angry: I'd be a lousy lawyer if I weren't.”
― Russell Banks, quote from The Sweet Hereafter
“Prior to that I had written many works but I was unable to present them for publication, in fact I had burned them all.”
― Gao Xingjian, quote from One Man's Bible
“Monogamy doesn’t work unless it rises up from the bones. Because it promises nothing but fear and tension when forced on you. It fills you up with despair where there might be joy. It shoves guilt and paranoia and self-loathing down your throat, if you don’t truly want it.”
― Will Christopher Baer, quote from Hell's Half Acre
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.