Quotes from The Instructions

“The point was to learn what it was we feared more: being misunderstood or being betrayed.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“Why do we weep once we know that everything will be alright? We weep because the only way everything could ever be alright is in fiction. We weep because what we've seen can't be true, no matter how badly we wish it were. We weep at the truth.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“If I'd thought she was uninterested, I never would have worried so much - the prospect of screwing something up is much more daunting than that of screwing nothing up. I definitely thought there was something there, and so there was something to lose, you see.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“It is dangerous to exist in the world. To exist is to be threatened. We must live with threats.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“You only taste your own dignity right before you puke it up.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“Without pain, there is no call for anger, much less rampaging.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“Regarding vengeance and arch-enemies, one must not only be timely but prideful, and pride exacts propriety.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“Easy as a child breathes a wish at a dandelion...is exactly how hard it would be for me to tear your limbs from their sockets.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“...I might mention my belief that girls who like Woody Allen movies are nicer girls than girls who don't...”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“Were there always to be more damage, damage would be an aspect of perfection. We would all be angels, one-legged and faceless, seething with endless, hopeless praise. Bless Adonai for making us better than angels. Blessed is Adonai for making us human.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“Go ahead and flunk me for begging the question, then go ahead and fuck yourself for asking it.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“All the word's indeed a page and we must loudly tear it.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“Don't you feel as though you could love everything starting tomorrow, and everything could love you, if only you took an action to set into motion the coming of our new tomorrow and its tomorrow and that one's tomorrow? Shotgun loaded hand on the pump and no matter who you damage you're still a false prophet, but we drink chocolate milk and then we get muscles and smash down the droves with fists like hammers and then we pump the fists in the air for victory. I be the prophet of the doom that is you. You are the mess in messiah.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“..it is good to do justice because God will kill you and your family whether you do justice or not.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“You can render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's, but if you don't keep from Caesar that which is yours, Caesar will take some, and than take some more, and if you don't put a stop to it, though you won't lose everything - you can't lose everything; there's things he can't take, at least one or two - a time will soon come when you'll think you've lost everything, when you'll think all is Caesar's, and by then you'll be too weak to take what's yours back, too tired to remember what was yours to begin with, and you'll end up, perversely, scheming for his leavings and, even more perversely, grateful when you get them.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“Maholtz asked me, “Why do you hate me?”
I said, Everyone hates you.
“I know,” he said. “I know that,” he said, “but they hate me cause I scared them or had what they wanted. You weren’t ever scarend of me. You never wanted what I had. Except for the sap. And then you took it, and now I don’t have it, so why do you hate me?”
Maybe it’s your accent.
“I’m from Pinttsburgh,” he said.
Maybe you shouldn’t be.
“I can’t help where I’m from.”
We turned at Main Hall. Feld was talking to Forrest Kenilworth and Cody. The chair sat dripping in front of the door.
So maybe it’s your face. The way you look at girls like you’re scheming to corner them.
“I was borng this way, though. I can’t help how my face loonks.”
So maybe it’s all the banced thing that you say.
“They just come out of me. I’m hated, I feel it. I say those things without thinking, from hurnt. I can’t help that either. It’s not my faulnt.”
I guess, then, I hate you for being so helpless.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“Since bad timing could mean almost anything, it was a certain kind of truth. A low kind.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“If you know your mom is a great killer, and you think of your mom as a great killer, and you know she would kill for you, not just metaphorically, but really end lives for you, without hesitation, you don't want to make her sad and worried because how can you repay her for all the things she's willing to do? You can't.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“Underdog stories are easy to tell. It is best to be suspicious of underdog stories.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“Let us be as the Cage has never been able to make us. Let us now all at once face forward in our boxes, still and silent as nightmares.
We did.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“Gurion would lament: What is the good of trying to do justice if God will kill me and my family whether or not I do justice?”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“..and if you're reckless enough to back talk me, you're reckless enough to think you understand girls like June Watermark, and you don't understand her because she's crazy and crazy people-they're misunderstood. It's why they are called crazy. And you probably think you're in love with her-it's what Boystar told me you said in the Office, and that's a fine thing to say to a girl, but if you think you mean it, it's a different story. Because what's love without understanding Gurion? A fucken lie it is.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“He described the experience as being 'a little bit less fun, perhaps, than chain-smoking for ninety minutes while handcuffed to a dowager with asthma who used to teach Health and smells incontinent.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“The fly was on my desk, his hose in the candy dust. I cupped my hand and covered him, then brushed him past the edge to see where he’d go. He returned to the dust, as if I hadn’t just demonstrated that I could kill him, as if I hadn’t just shown him right there in the dust.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“Nonetheless, he is a boy. Despite his talents, a boy. And a boy is more idealistic than a man, and high ideals in the hands of children can be as dangerous as weapons. He thought he was in the right, and because he thought he was in the right, he thought there would be an exception. That's that.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“While I did that, my own eyes got wet, not fakely, and I blinked the wetness away because it was not my privilege to be sad. Leonard Brodsky was the one who was hurt, and I was the one who’d hurt him, and it didn’t matter that I hadn’t wanted to hurt him or that I didn’t know how I’d hurt him. It didn’t matter that I knew not what I did to him. It didn’t need a name to be wrong. It didn’t need reasons I could understand. Verbosity is like the iniquity of idolatry.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“The goodness of our intentions was in direct correlation to the heights from which we condescended to each other.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“I feel like a millionaire on the back of an armored jet-ski my samurai girlfriend who loves me is charging at a cartel speedboat to win a game of chicken. Isn’t this the day’s best part? You don’t even have to remember to enjoy it. It enjoys you into itself.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

“Reasonable of you, John. Reasonable of you, Dick. No two Israelites had ever pattered so goyischely.”
― Adam Levin, quote from The Instructions

About the author

Popular quotes

“So, like, Zeus was just some great big preternatural baby-daddy?”
― Nicole Peeler, quote from Tracking the Tempest

“But the most terrible thing was that the shame didn't simply sear my heart, it also mingled into a single whole with the pleasure I was getting from what was going on.

It was something quite unimaginable - truly beyond good and evil. It was then that I finally understood the fatal abysses trodden by De Sade and Sacher-Masoch, who I had always thought absurdly pompous. No, they weren't absurd at all - they simply hadn't been able to find the right words to convey the true nature of their nightmares. And I knew why - there were no such words in any human language.

'Stop,' I whispered through my tears.

But in heart I didn't know what I wanted - for him to stop or to carry on.

I couldn't hold back any longer and I started crying. But they were tears of pleasure, a monstrous, shameful pleasure that was too enthralling to be abandoned voluntarily.”
― Victor Pelevin, quote from The Sacred Book of the Werewolf

“His wives had discovered early on what a poor or frightening prospect of a father he presented and they had protected themselves and got out.”
― Ian McEwan, quote from Solar

“My dreams were always the same I could see myself laughing . I was standing somewhere in a forest a raindrop rolled down a branch and fell on my nose . My hair was a sparkling red color and I was wearing a white flowing ball gown made from silk. I could feel him the one I loved staring at me intensely . His eyes as gold as the sun . I could hear him saying my love Fleur .. you are everything to me. His fingertips lightly shivering as he touched my face beckoning for me to come closer. I don't know what I would do if I lost you . "Are you sure you want to be with me?" My body protested as I fought for him to stay but he never did. As soon as I woke up his presence was gone.”
― Isabella Kruger, quote from Afterlife

“Should, is the worst word
in the English language. People always think things "should" be a certain way, and when they're
not, they're disappointed.”
― Candace Bushnell, quote from Summer and the City

Interesting books

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.