“Life makes so many choices for us.”
― Sara Alexi, quote from The Illegal Gardener
“Life depends on what is in your heart.”
― Sara Alexi, quote from The Illegal Gardener
“It is easy to think you’re OK if you don’t know what you’re missing.”
― Sara Alexi, quote from The Illegal Gardener
“she could only do what she had the knowledge and power to do at the time.”
― Sara Alexi, quote from The Illegal Gardener
“Aaman got taken for being illegal, you’ve tried to find him but haven’t had any luck, and you’re crying because you haven’t found him. That’s what it sounds like. Is that what’s going on?” “Yes.” “Are you crying over Aaman because he was a great gardener or did something happen between you guys?”
― Sara Alexi, quote from The Illegal Gardener
“She is surprised that she is still alive in this moment, that she has survived meeting with these feelings, that she has not been engulfed and eaten alive by the enormity of the pain.”
― Sara Alexi, quote from The Illegal Gardener
“to Sialkot. Mahmout is from the south, a world apart. Friends are irrelevant to his quest. Mahmout is grinning, as always. Mahmout slumps, yawning, onto the circular bench.”
― Sara Alexi, quote from The Illegal Gardener
“Juliet notices the insecurities rising within her – the demons of not being heard, the goblins of not being understood, the imps of not being considered important. The fight between them confuses her thinking into a shade of panic.”
― Sara Alexi, quote from The Illegal Gardener
“You really have no idea, do you?”
“No idea about what?”
“How thoroughly you own me, Nightie Girl,” he said, leaning in to whisper this part in my ear. “And I know I love you enough to want you to have your happy ending.”
― Alice Clayton, quote from Wallbanger
“Different sorts of survival machine appear very varied on the outside and in their internal organs. An octopus is nothing like a mouse, and both are quite different from an oak tree. Yet in their fundamental chemistry they are rather uniform, and, in particular, the replicators that they bear, the genes, are basically the same kind of molecule in all of us—from bacteria to elephants. We are all survival machines for the same kind of replicator—molecules called DNA— but there are many different ways of making a living in the world, and the replicators have built a vast range of machines to exploit them. A monkey is a machine that preserves genes up trees, a fish is a machine that preserves genes in the water; there is even a small worm that preserves genes in German beer mats. DNA works in mysterious ways.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Selfish Gene
“Why did she do it? Nobody dared to ask. Because - what courage! Who had the courage to burn herself? Twenty aspirin, a little slit alongside the veins of the arm, maybe even a bad half hour standing on a roof: We've all had those. And somewhat more dangerous things, like putting a gun in your mouth. But you put it there, you taste it, it's cold and greasy, your finger is on the trigger, and you find that a whole world lies between this moment and the moment you've been planning, when you'll pull the trigger. That world defeats you. You put the gun back in the drawer. You'll have to find another way.
What was that moment like for her? The moment she lit the match. Had she already tried roofs and guns and aspirins? Or was it just an inspiration?
I had an inspiration once. I woke up one morning and I knew that today I had to swallow fifty aspirin. It was my task: my job for the day. I lined them up on my desk and took them one by one, counting. But it's not the same as what she did. I could have stopped, at ten, or at thirty. And I could have done what I did do, which was go onto the street and faint. Fifty aspirin is a lot of aspirin, but going onto the street and fainting is like putting the gun back in the drawer.
She lit the match.”
― Susanna Kaysen, quote from Girl, Interrupted
“I am sliding, down,down. Toward blackness, I must not sleep. I must not sleep.I.Must.Not.Sleep.”
― S.J. Watson, quote from Before I Go to Sleep
“Lilly says I have an overactive imagination and a pathological need to invent drama in my life.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from The Princess Diaries
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.