“Ya writin’ a book? Hey great. Need some help? Want some of my quips? Hey, we could do it together. We’d quip ’em to death. Give ’em quiplash hee hee hee.”
― Ken Dryden, quote from The Game
“I feel nothing, I hear nothing, my eyes watch the puck, my body moves—like a goalie moves, like I move; I don’t tell it to move or how to move or where, I don’t know it’s moving, I don’t feel it move—yet it moves. And when my eyes watch the puck, I see things I don’t know I’m seeing. I see Larson and Nedomansky as they come on the ice, I see them away from the puck unthreatening and uninvolved. I see something in the way a shooter holds his stick, in the way his body angles and turns, in the way he’s being checked, in what he’s done before that tells me what he’ll do—and my body moves. I let it move. I trust it and the unconscious mind that moves it.”
― Ken Dryden, quote from The Game
“His players don’t sit around telling hateful-affectionate stories about him. Someone might say of him, as former Packers great Henry Jordan once said of Lombardi, “He treats us all the same—like dogs,”
― Ken Dryden, quote from The Game
“When you are a presence, there are many things you need not do, for it is simply understood you can do them. So you don’t do them. You don’t risk what you need not risk, you let others’ imaginations do them for you, for they do them better than you can. Like the man who opens his mouth to prove he’s a fool, often the more you do, the more you look like everyone else.”
― Ken Dryden, quote from The Game
“Yet, in fact, both were deeply sensitive and very much alike, Frank keeping everything inside, Pete letting it out, and steamrollering it before it could bother him.”
― Ken Dryden, quote from The Game
“But life on the road comes at a price. The energy it gives, the freedom you feel, it takes away, and more—twenty-six weeks a season, eighty games, from bus to plane to bus to hotel to bus to arena to bus to plane, to a leagueful of cities three times a week. A rhythm like any other rhythm, it is one you get used to; except this one is always changing and you never do. Like a skillful runner in a distance race, it sets the pace and plays with you; going slower than you want it to, speeding up before you are ready, gradually wearing you down, until after four games in five nights in four different cities, you are weak and vulnerable, and it sprints away from you.”
― Ken Dryden, quote from The Game
“Once I didn’t. Once, as I was told I should, I kept a “book” on all the players I knew, with notes about wrist shots, slap shots, backhands, quick releases or slow, glove side or stick side, high or low; about forehand dekes or backhand dekes, and before a game, I would memorize and rehearse all that was there. But when my body prepared for Thompson’s backhand before I knew it was Thompson, I realized that what was in my book, and more, was stored away in my mind and muscles as nerve impulses, ready, able to move my body before I could.”
― Ken Dryden, quote from The Game
“For there is a life there, and in destiny and romance there is no room for life. Painted as they are with broad brush strokes, vivid and lush, they find shape and pattern only with distance. The person who lives them is too close. He feels sweat as well as triumph. He understands what others see, but feels none of it himself”
― Ken Dryden, quote from The Game
“As for the Wings, I wanted to tighten some already painfully tight screws, to force on them the kind of cruel question no one should have to answer: am I willing to go through what surely I must, for something I will surely never get?”
― Ken Dryden, quote from The Game
“She smiled at him as they waited for their dessert, her chin poised on her clasped hands.
'You're being very silent.'
'That's how men cry.”
― John Fowles, quote from Daniel Martin
“It struck me that Lee was in many ways our true hero. Lee was the one who did the dirtiest jobs, quietly, without fuss, without going into big emotional scenes. He was so efficient, so reliable, so brave. Whenever we fell short, he made up the gap. I'm not just talking about the red hot moments, when enemy soldiers were shooting at us, when we were within a moment of death. I'm talking about the sourer times too, when we were so tired we could hardly remember to breathe, or we were so bored we'd pick at each other just for something to do, or so distressed we'd wish a soldier would come along and blow us into oblivion with an M16. At all those times Lee stood strong. He was like the Wirrawee grain silo. You could see the grain silo from miles away, tall and reliable. It stood for Wirrawee, and it gave you a safe comforting feeling to know it was there. That was how I'd felt about Lee during the war.”
― John Marsden, quote from The Other Side of Dawn
“Well, I was thinking this very thing. I was thinking: I am going to die today, but Jesu also died, so he knows how it is with me. And I was thinking, would he know me when I came to him? Yes! Sitting in his hall, he will see me sail into the bay, and he will run down to meet me on the shore; he will wade into the sea and pull my boat onto the sand and welcome me as his wayfaring brother. Why will he do this? Because he too has suffered, and he knows, Aeddan, he knows.” Beaming, Gunnar concluded, “Is that not good news?”
― Stephen R. Lawhead, quote from Byzantium
“We are a society of notoriously unhappy people: lonely, anxious, depressed, destructive, dependent — people who are glad when we have killed the time we are trying so hard to save.”
― Erich Fromm, quote from To Have or to Be? The Nature of the Psyche
“Bluntly and quietly, in a series of simple, forthright sentences, she dismantled the architecture of unhappiness that had been growing up around us for the past several days. She was calling from the office she said, and had to talk in a low voice, 'but if you can hear me, Sid' she began, 'there are four things I want you to know. First, I haven't stopped thinking about you since I left the house this morning. Second, I've decided to have the baby, and we're never going to use the word "abortion" again. Third, don't bother to make dinner. [...] Fourth, make sure Mr. Johnson's ready for action. I'm going to attack you the minute I walk in the door, my love, so be prepared.”
― Paul Auster, quote from Oracle Night
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.