Quotes from The Girls

“Write,' she said, 'as if you'll never be read. That way you'll be sure to tell the truth.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“I feel, holding books, accommodating their weight and breathing their dust, an abiding love. I trust them, in a way that I can't trust my computer, though I couldn't do without it. Books are matter. My books matter. What would I have done through these years without the library and all its lovely books?”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“The strangest thing about strange things is that they're only strange when you hear about them or think about them later, but never when you're living them.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars though they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“What is it about sadness that can be so fulfilling?”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“How cruel it must be for a man to live past his soul.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“Art isn't a product. It's an experience”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“The city, no matter how small, is corrupt and unrepentant, while the sun shines brighter in the country, making people more wholesome.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“I hum some secret place into being, thinking of this other me, the one that only I can see, a girl called She, who is not We, a girl who I will never be.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“Aunt Lovey used to tell me that if I wanted to be a writer, I needed a writer's voice. 'Read,' she'd say, 'and if you have a writer's voice, one day it will shout out, 'I can do that too! ”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“Before she closed her eyes tonight, Rose said she regretted that she has not done something heroic in her life. Well, it's not like she can suddenly climb a tree and save a cat, or go to medical school and begin some important cancer research. But Rose has been my sister. I think that's heroic.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“In sleep, my sister and I found a common breath. In dreams, we knew the moon.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“I would not have dreamed back then, could never have imagined, that one day I would be a childless mother too.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“I can't exactly say why I've chosen to write about the things that I am writing about. There are doubtless better stories from my life that I am missing, events and escapades I am not wise enough to know were important. If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars that they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead.

p 179 ”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“Funny how you can measure time by pets that were not even your own.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“Uncle Stash said you didn't have to be crazy to to do something stupid, just young.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“I wonder if all women secretly fantasize, like me, about what it would be like to be an extraordinary beauty and bitchy as you wanna be.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“Ruby is my sister. And strangely, undeniably, my child.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“On the farm, in our first-floor bedroom, my sister and I were sheltered in the essence of normal. We were not hidden, but unseen. The orange farmhouse was our castle, our kingdom the fields around, and the shallow creek that bisected our property the sea we crossed to find adventure.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“The final picture in the album was of Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash, their black-and-white wedding photo. I hated that their picture came last, because it felt like they were saying goodbye.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“You're just not always in a place for as long as you thought you'd be.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“As I grew older, I found I could surrender my own comfort so effortlessly it didn't qualify as sacrifice.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“You think about these words final last never a lot, and there are not many things, when you come right down to it, that you'll be happy to see the end of.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“There's too much information out there. And not enough smart people.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“Fatal is fatal, but it doesn't have to be all downhill.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

“It was Aunt Lovey's belief that all ordinary people led extraordinary lives, but just didn't notice.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls

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Popular quotes

“Better poverty without a care than wealth with its many obligations.”
― Aesop, quote from Aesop's Fables

“Scots, wha hae wi' Wallace bled;
Scots, wham Bruce has aften led,
Welcome to your glory bed,
Or to victory.”
― Joe Haldeman, quote from The Forever War

“We are all dying of life.”
― John Jakes, quote from North and South

“His way of coping with the days was to think of activities as units of time, each unit consisting of about thirty minutes. Whole hours, he found, were more intimidating, and most things one could do in a day took half an hour. Reading the paper, having a bath, tidying the flat, watching Home and Away and Countdown, doing a quick crossword on the toilet, eating breakfast and lunch, going to the local shops… That was nine units of a twenty-unit day (the evenings didn’t count) filled by just the basic necessities. In fact, he had reached a stage where he wondered how his friends could juggle life and a job. Life took up so much time, so how could one work and, say, take a bath on the same day? He suspected that one or two people he knew were making some pretty unsavoury short cuts.”
― Nick Hornby, quote from About a Boy

“Thank you," he said. "Welcome. Welcome especially to Mr. Coyle Mathis and the other men and women of Forster Hollow who are going to be employed at this rather strikingly energy-inefficient plant. It's a long way from Forster Hollow, isn't it?"

"So, yes, welcome," he said. "Welcome to the middle class! That's what I want to say. Although, quickly, before I go any further, I also want to say to Mr. Mathis here in the front row: I know you don't like me. And I don't like you. But, you know, back when you were refusing to have anything to do with us, I respected that. I didn't like it, but I had respect for your position. For your independence. You see, because I actually came from a place a little bit like Forster Hollow myself, before I joined the middle class. And, now you're middle-class, too, and I want to welcome you all, because it's a wonderful thing, our American middle class. It's the mainstay of economies all around the globe!"

"And now that you've got these jobs at this body-armor plant," he continued, "You're going to be able to participate in those economies. You, too, can help denude every last scrap of native habitat in Asia, Africa, and South America! You, too, can buy six-foot-wide plasma TV screens that consume unbelievable amounts of energy, even when they're not turned on! But that's OK, because that's why we threw you out of your homes in the first places, so we could strip-mine your ancestral hills and feed the coal-fired generators that are the number-one cause of global warming and other excellent things like acid rain. It's a perfect world, isn't it? It's a perfect system, because as long as you've got your six-foot-wide plasma TV, and the electricity to run it, you don't have to think about any of the ugly consequences. You can watch Survivor: Indonesia till there's no more Indonesia!"

"Just quickly, here," he continued, "because I want to keep my remarks brief. Just a few more remarks about this perfect world. I want to mention those big new eight-miles-per-gallon vehicles you're going to be able to buy and drive as much as you want, now that you've joined me as a member of the middle class. The reason this country needs so much body armor is that certain people in certain parts of the world don't want us stealing all their oil to run your vehicles. And so the more you drive your vehicles, the more secure your jobs at this body-armor plant are going to be! Isn't that perfect?"

"Just a couple more things!" Walter cried, wresting the mike from its holder and dancing away with it. "I want to welcome you all to working for one of the most corrupt and savage corporations in the world! Do you hear me? LBI doesn't give a shit about your sons and daughters bleeding in Iraq, as long as they get their thousand-percent profit! I know this for a fact! I have the facts to prove it! That's part of the perfect middle-class world you're joining! Now that you're working for LBI, you can finally make enough money to keep your kids from joining the Army and dying in LBI's broken-down trucks and shoddy body armor!"

The mike had gone dead, and Walter skittered backwards, away from the mob that was forming. "And MEANWHILE," he shouted, "WE ARE ADDING THIRTEEN MILLION HUMAN BEINGS TO THE POPULATION EVERY MONTH! THIRTEEN MILLION MORE PEOPLE TO KILL EACH OTHER IN COMPETITION OVER FINITE RESOURCES! AND WIPE OUT EVERY OTHER LIVING THING ALONG THE WAY! IT IS A PERFECT FUCKING WORLD AS LONG AS YOU DON'T COUNT EVERY OTHER SPECIES IN IT! WE ARE A CANCER ON THE PLANT! A CANCER ON THE PLANET!”
― Jonathan Franzen, quote from Freedom

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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.