“...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
“You need to let go of everything you can’t control. Anything that’s already happened, anything you’re afraid might or might not happen—you can’t control any of that. You can only control how you react to it. And how you’re reacting right now,”
― quote from Miracles from Heaven: A Little Girl, Her Journey to Heaven, and Her Amazing Story of Healing
“You have to be an artist and a madman, a creature of infinite melancholy, with a bubble of hot poison in your loins and a super-voluptuous flame permanently aglow in your subtle spine (oh, how you have to cringe and hide!), in order to discern at once, by ineffable signs―the slightly feline outline of a cheekbone, the slenderness of a downy limbs, and other indices which despair and shame and tears of tenderness forbid me to tabulate―the little deadly demon among the wholesome children; she stands unrecognized by them and unconscious herself of her fantastic power.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, quote from The Annotated Lolita
“The woman with the horned helmet—who had to be of Viking descent—spoke.”
― James Rollins, quote from Jake Ransom and the Skull King's Shadow
“Oh no,” I breathed. “Oh no, oh no, oh no.” My hands flapped as I bounced from foot to foot. I imagined something exploding from my ribcage. Something with tentacles and acid spit. “Babe, I should not have drank that water.” Venomous moved to stand just out of reach on the other side of the haze. Tremors wracked his frame, and he looked desperately like he wanted to snatch me up then run. “Fix her,” Fiercely snapped as he loomed over the a’Rä. “Fix her now.” I clutched my chest. “I feel it moving.” Venomous paled. “Oh, no, that’s a necklace, but it’s only a matter of time.”
― Penelope Fletcher, quote from Venomous
“أسرت له زوجة مدير تنتمي إلى طبقة راقية، وهي إمرأة ناضجة ولها سمعة فاضلة، وفوق ذلك لديها علاقات اجتماعية كثيرة:
"في المساء، قبل أن أنام، أغمض عيني وأحاول أن أعد على أصابعي الرجال الذين يروق لي أن يقبلوني. أحصيهم على أصابعي، الأمر مسلٍّ، وعندما لا أصل إلى العدد عشرة، أحس نفسي وحيدة متروكة" ص 32”
― Yasunari Kawabata, quote from House of the Sleeping Beauties and Other Stories
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.