“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
“Creo que la verdad está bien en las matemáticas, en la química, en la filosofía. No en la vida. En la vida es más importante la ilusión, la imaginación, el deseo, la esperanza. Además, ¿sabemos acaso lo que es la verdad? Si yo lo digo que aquel trozo de ventana azul, digo una verdad. Pero es una verdad parcial, y por lo tanto una especie de mentira. Porque el trozo de ventana no está solo, está en una casa, en una cuidad, en un paisaje. Está rodeado del gris de ese muro de cemento, del azul claro del cielo, de aquellas nubes alargadas, de infinitas cosas más. Y si no digo todo absolutamente todo, estoy mintiendo. Pero decir todo es imposible, aun en este caso de la ventana, de un siempre trozo de la realidad física. La realidad es infinita y además infinitamente matizada, y si me olvido de un solo matiz, ya estoy mintiendo. Ahora imagínese lo que es la realidad de los seres humanos con sus complicaciones y recovecos, contradicciones y además cambiantes. Porque cambia a cada instante que pasa, y lo que éramos hace un momento no lo somos más. ¿Somos, acaso, siempre la misma persona? ¿Tenemos acaso siempre los mismos sentimientos? Se puede querer a alguien y de pronto desestimarlo y hasta detestarlo. Y si cuando lo desestimamos cometemos el error de decírselo, eso es una verdad, pero una verdad momentánea, que no será más verdad dentro de una hora o al otro día, o en otras circunstancias. Y en cambio el ser a quien se la decimos creerá que ésa es la verdad, la verdad para siempre y desde siempre. Y se hundirá en la desesperación.”
― Ernesto Sabato, quote from On Heroes and Tombs
“There is much in this world that hurts us, but if we let pain become our master, we live our lives as slaves.”
― Hannah Hart, quote from Buffering: Unshared Tales of a Life Fully Loaded
“Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Slaughterhouse-five: The Children's Crusade, A Duty-dance with Death
“The light was going: some cloud cover arriving, as if summoned by drama.”
― China Miéville, quote from Kraken
“Rev is about as aggressive as an old golden retriever.”
― Brigid Kemmerer, quote from Letters to the Lost
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.