“We are strong and proud and beautiful and there are not enough stars in the night sky to measure our worth.
I will honor my mother and take care of my family.
Yes, I think. I am just a woman.”
― Kristen Simmons, quote from The Glass Arrow
“My ma taught me one thing from the beginning: My body is mine. My own. No one else’s. Just because somebody thinks they have rights to it, doesn’t make it true. I thought I understood that before, but here, in this place, it’s become more clear than ever how right she was. My flesh and blood–it’s the only thing I own, and I’ll defend it until I can’t fight anymore.”
― Kristen Simmons, quote from The Glass Arrow
“They've forgotten, or maybe they've never learning, that their worth is not determined by how much a man wants them.”
― Kristen Simmons, quote from The Glass Arrow
“I'd rather be a wolf than a girl any day.”
― Kristen Simmons, quote from The Glass Arrow
“There are bigger things in life than being chosen.”
― Kristen Simmons, quote from The Glass Arrow
“And I feel it happen--silent and study as a feather, a piece of my soul becomes his.”
― Kristen Simmons, quote from The Glass Arrow
“The Garden trapped me like an animal. The Governess sold me like livestock at an auction. And the mayor and his family would have made me their whore. I am shaking with rage.”
― Kristen Simmons, quote from The Glass Arrow
“But,” I say, wetting my lips, “but if trust was a thing you could hold in your hand, I would give mine to you. I’d let you have it forever and never ask for it back.”
― Kristen Simmons, quote from The Glass Arrow
“I feel a strange sensation brewing inside of me. It tickles my throat and forces my lips into a grin. Before I can stifle it, I giggle. And then I laugh.”
― Kristen Simmons, quote from The Glass Arrow
“Behind us are two or three dozen country people from the outlying towns. With them are cages of chicken and goats, sheep, even cattle. That’s where we fit on market day. Between the executions and the livestock sales.”
― Kristen Simmons, quote from The Glass Arrow
“That's where we fit on market day. Between the executions and the livestock sales.”
― Kristen Simmons, quote from The Glass Arrow
“I’d rather be a wolf than a girl any day.”
― Kristen Simmons, quote from The Glass Arrow
“and soft as a feather, a piece of my soul becomes his.”
― Kristen Simmons, quote from The Glass Arrow
Kristen Simmons
Born place: The United States
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“They forgot who she was:
Something fantastic we could never explain. Someone better and bolder than every one of us. Someone to paint murals and build bridges for. Someone worth every ounce of our love.
Someone powerful, but in the end not powerful enough.”
― Nova Ren Suma, quote from Imaginary Girls
“By the middle of the afternoon it had rained so much that the drains were overflowing, clogged up with leaves and newspapers.
The water built up until it was sliding across the road in great sheets, rippled by the wind and parted like a football crowd by passing cars.
I was shocked by the sheer volume of water that came pouring out of the darkness of the sky.
Watching the weight of it crashing into the ground made me feel like a very young child, unable to understand what was really happening.
Like trying to understand radio waves, or imagining computers communicating along glass cables.
I leant my face against the window as the rain piled upon it, streaming down in waves, blurring my vision, making the shops opposite waver and disappear.
There was a time when I might have found this exhilarating, even miraculous, but not that day.
That day it made me nervous and tense, unable to concentrate on anything while the noise of it clattered against the windows and the roof.
I kept opening the door to look for clear skies, and slamming it shut again.
And then around teatime, from nowhere, I smashed all the dirty plates and mugs into the washing-up bowl.
Something swept through me, swept out of and over me, something unstoppable, like water surging from a broken tap and flooding across the kitchen floor.
I don't quite understand why I felt that way, why I reacted like that.
I wanted to be saying it's just something that happens.
But I was there, that day, slamming the kitchen door over and over again until the handle came loose.
Smacking my hand against the worktop, kicking the cupboard doors, throwing the plates into the sink.
Going fuckfuckfuck through my clenched teeth.
I wanted someone to see me, I wanted someone to come rushing in, to take hold of me and say hey hey what are you doing, hey come on, what's wrong.
But there was no one there, and no one came. ”
― Jon McGregor, quote from If Nobody Speaks of Remarkable Things
“People, like houses, hold their secrets. Sometimes the secrets inhabit them, and sometimes people inhabit their secrets. They wrap their arms tight to hug them close, twist their lying tongues around the truth. But, like gravy left overnight, the truth is a thin layer of film that forms and covers the surface. The truth prevails, rises above all else. It squirms and wriggles inside, grows until the swollen tongue can’t wrap itself around the lie any longer, until the time comes when it needs to spit the words out and send truth flying through the air and crashing into the world like…well, like a frozen dead bird through a living room window. Truth and time always work alongside each other.”
― Cecelia Ahern, quote from The Gift
“Finally, I’d say to anyone who wants to tell these tales, don’t be afraid to be superstitious. If you have a lucky pen, use it. If you speak with more force and wit when wearing one red sock and one blue one, dress like that. When I’m at work I’m highly superstitious. My own superstition has to do with the voice in which the story comes out. I believe that every story is attended by its own sprite, whose voice we embody when we tell the tale, and that we tell it more successfully if we approach the sprite with a certain degree of respect and courtesy. These sprites are both old and young, male and female, sentimental and cynical, sceptical and credulous, and so on, and what’s more, they’re completely amoral: like the air-spirits who helped Strong Hans escape from the cave, the story-sprites are willing to serve whoever has the ring, whoever is telling the tale. To the accusation that this is nonsense, that all you need to tell a story is a human imagination, I reply, ‘Of course, and this is the way my imagination works.”
― Philip Pullman, quote from Fairy Tales from the Brothers Grimm: A New English Version
“The ethics of plagiarism have turned into the narcissism of small differences: because journalism cannot own up to its heavily derivative nature, it must enforce originality on the level of the sentence.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, quote from What the Dog Saw and Other Adventures
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A Room with a ViewBookQuoters 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.
