Quotes from The House of Sleep

Jonathan Coe ·  337 pages

Rating: (7.6K votes)


“...quando perdi qualcuno e questo qualcuno ti manca, tu soffri perché la persona assente si è trasformata in un essere immaginario: irreale. Ma il tuo desiderio di lei non è immaginario. Così è a quello che devi aggrapparti: al desiderio. Perché è reale.”
― Jonathan Coe, quote from The House of Sleep


“Your gravity, your grace have turned a tide
In me, no lunar power can reverse;
But in your narcoleptic eyes I spied
A sightlessness tonight: or something worse,
A disregard that made me feel unmanned.
Meanwhile, insomniac, I catch my breath
To think I saw my future traced in sand
One afternoon "as still, as carved, as death,”
And pray for an oblivion so deep
It ends in transformation. Only dawn
Can save me, flood this haunted house of sleep
With light, and drown the thoughts that nightly warn:
Another lifetime is the least you’ll need, to trace
The guarded secrets of her gravity, her grace.”
― Jonathan Coe, quote from The House of Sleep


“There’s a fine line between forgetting an event, and suppressing the memory of it.”
― Jonathan Coe, quote from The House of Sleep


“If there was one kind of hat Terry despised above all others, it was the baseball cap. There was nothing wrong with children wearing it, of course, but whenever he saw it on the head of an adult it seemed to symbolize everything that he most hated about America, even more potently than the figure of Mickey Mouse or the latest Coke adverts or the hordes of giant yellow ‘M’s which were even now beginning to advance across Britain like an unchecked virus. And even worse, Kingsley was wearing it back to front. This, without doubt, was the ultimate badge of imbecility.”
― Jonathan Coe, quote from The House of Sleep


“Don’t you know what a pussy is, sir?’

‘Of course he doesn’t. He hasn’t even seen Basic Instinct.”
― Jonathan Coe, quote from The House of Sleep



“This is the crazed, manic energy of the bull at the end of the fight, fatally wounded but ploughing ahead, driven only by pain and anger and the mindless will to go on living.”
― Jonathan Coe, quote from The House of Sleep


About the author

Jonathan Coe
Born place: in Birmingham, The United Kingdom
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“Have you ever felt time slow so much that that it almost appears to stop? Ever listened to a clock when the next tick seems to take forever to follow the last tock?”
― Joseph Delaney, quote from Revenge of the Witch


“The fire roared down upon us. It curled through our hair, then wrapped around our wrists and faces, trying to drag us apart. It seared across my skin, hotter than the Heart of Fire, and yet more painful was how it seared through my mind. The fire burned away my memories, taking back his name and mine, both of my pasts and all of my hopes, the sky and the sparrow and the world itself. I clung to somebody I did not know, could not imagine knowing, but I still knew beyond all doubt that he was mine.

We fell until we had been falling forever and always, and always would continue falling, because nothing existed outside this chaos of fire and shadow.

But I held on to him.

And he held on to me.”
― Rosamund Hodge, quote from Cruel Beauty


“Amy wondered if Bonaparte could declare war on Miss Gwen alone without breaking his peace with England”
― Lauren Willig, quote from The Secret History of the Pink Carnation


“One of the things Lissianna had learned through the centuries was that there was nothing more dangerous than a zealot.”
― Lynsay Sands, quote from A Quick Bite


Sometimes I can't tell the difference between living and dead. Sometimes I look at a pretty little girlie and I think to myself, Is she a living, breathing thing? Or is she just a doll? Are those actualy tears she's crying? Are those real creams coming out of her mouth? And it's like a fog in my mind, like I get all confused and frustrated and mixed up, so I start doing things. Start small at first, like maybe with the ears or the lips or the toes. And then move on to the bigger things, and there's blood, so I keeping going and my hands are wet and my mouth is warm and I keep going and then something magical happens, Jasper. It's real magical and special and beautiful. See, they stop moving. They stop struggiling. All the fight just goes away and that's when it's all clear to me: She's dead. And if she's dead, then that means that she used to be alive. So then I know: This was a living one, a real one. And I feel good after that 'cause I figured it out.
― Barry Lyga, quote from I Hunt Killers


Interesting books

The Moth in the Mirror
(4.4K)
The Moth in the Mirr...
by A.G. Howard
The Complete Poems of Emily Bronte [with Biographical Introduction]
(2.6K)
The Complete Poems o...
by Emily Brontë
The Quest for Cosmic Justice
(762)
The Quest for Cosmic...
by Thomas Sowell
Long Walk to Freedom: Autobiography of Nelson Mandela
(50.6K)
Long Walk to Freedom...
by Nelson Mandela
Etta and Otto and Russell and James
(8.9K)
Etta and Otto and Ru...
by Emma Hooper
Disturbing the Universe
(589)
Disturbing the Unive...
by Freeman Dyson

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.