“We became friends, I suppose, because we lived close to each other and it suited us and because when you are young friendships go unquestioned.”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
“There's something uncomfortable about looking at pictures of your parents at a time when they made each other happy.”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
“Here in the hills the rain washing down my face feels good. I lift up my head and open my mouth and let the water in, it is sweet, pure and sweet. I shield my eyes and look in the direction of the town, invisible behind the torrent of water. Let it run, I think, through the streets, down the gutters, into drains until it is carried away by the river. Let it wash away the shit and the pus and the blood, the things that can be washed away. But let it also wash away the fear and the malice and the spite, the things that are harder to erase.”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
“Whenever he was asked what somebody had died of he'd reply (with immense gravity), "Lack of breath.”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
“There's nothing new about this story of ours, such things happen. Love misses its mark, arrives too early or too late. Nobody dies, except in novels.”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
“People said it was a song about drugs, but John Lennon said the name came from a picture his son painted of a girl at school.”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
“I’d always kept an eye on the house. I don’t mean doing repairs, for as the house didn’t belong to me that was not my place, but rather I’d keep watch over its decline. The changes come slowly, like watching a woman age: another line, the spread of crow’s feet, age spots rising slowly to the surface. One day the face you know is ravaged.”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
“For a long time, as I waited for her to return, I believed she knew I was there behind the trees and that this was my doing. That she knew I would come. For who else could it have been?”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
“There are after all, and as Laura said, so many summers.”
― Aminatta Forna, quote from The Hired Man
Aminatta Forna
Born place: Glasgow, The United Kingdom
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“Finally the pieces started to make sense and I began to feel a pensive awareness of circumstances other than my own; a knowing that brings with it a kind is stillness that I didn't quite understand but accepted it for its own.”
― Christopher Scotton, quote from The Secret Wisdom of the Earth
“Unlike any other creature on this planet, human beings can learn and understand without having experienced. They can think themselves into other peoples’ places. Of course, this is a power like my brand of fictional magic that is morally neutral. One might use such a power to manipulate or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize. And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or peer inside cages. They can close their hearts and minds to any suffering that does not touch them personally. They can refuse to know. I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think that they have any fewer nightmares than I do.”
― J.K. Rowling, quote from Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination
“There are moments in life that change us irreparably. Sometimes those moments are grand and dramatic, tragic or beautiful in their intensity. Sometimes those moments are quiet and small like footsteps fading behind a closed door. The subtlety of those moments can sometimes camouflage their impact and sometimes the impact is felt profoundly, but the quietness of the moment is lost on everyone else around you adding loneliness to the equation.”
― Samantha Young, quote from Moonlight on Nightingale Way
“Little world, full of little people
shouting for recognition, screaming for love,
Rolling world, teeming with millions,
carousel of the hungry,
Is there food enough? Wheat and corn will not do.
The fat are the hungriest of all, the skinny the most silent.”
― James Kavanaugh, quote from There Are Men Too Gentle to Live Among Wolves
“This means that if boys and girls grew up on a deserted island with no organised society or parents to guide them, girls would still cuddle, touch, make friends and play with dolls, while boys would compete mentally and physically with each other and form groups with a clear hierarchy.”
― Allan Pease, quote from Why Men Don't Listen and Women Can't Read Maps: How We're Different and What to Do About It
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The Da Vinci CodeBookQuoters 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.
