“Inflection is the adjective of language. It carries the subtleties of delight and horror, the essence of culture and social process.”
― Frank Herbert, quote from The Jesus Incident
“Myths are not fiction, but history seen with a poet's eyes and recounted in a poet's terms.”
― Frank Herbert, quote from The Jesus Incident
“A good bureaucracy is the best tool of oppression ever invented.”
― Frank Herbert, quote from The Jesus Incident
“Hittite law emphasized restitution rather than revenge. Humankind lost a certain useful practicality when it chose the other Semitic response—never to forgive and never to forget.”
― Frank Herbert, quote from The Jesus Incident
“The mystery of consciousness? Erroneous data—significant results.”
― Frank Herbert, quote from The Jesus Incident
“Ignoring that which is false is also a knowing. Thus—learning. To learn is to grow and to grow is to live. You may practice forgetting and thus learn.”
― Frank Herbert, quote from The Jesus Incident
“Even the seemingly immortal gods survive only as long as they are required by mortal men.”
― Frank Herbert, quote from The Jesus Incident
“There will be other lives.
There will be other lives for nervous boys with sweaty palms, for bittersweet fumblings in the backseats of cars, for caps and gowns in royal blue and crimson, for mothers clasping pretty pearl necklaces around daughters' unlined necks, for your full name read aloud in an auditorium, for brand-new suitcases transporting you to strange new people in strange new lands.
And there will be other lives for unpaid debts, for one-night stands, for Prague and Paris, for painful shoes with pointy toes, for indecision and revisions.
And there will be other lives for fathers walking daughters down aisles.
And there will be other lives for sweet babies with skin like milk.
And there will be other lives for a man you don't recognize, for a face in a mirror that is no longer yours, for the funerals of intimates, for shrinking, for teeth that fall out, for hair on your chin, for forgetting everything. Everything.
Oh, there are so many lives. How we wish we could live them concurrently instead of one by one by one. We could select the best pieces of each, stringing them together like a strand of pearls. But that's not how it works. A human's life is a beautiful mess.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from Elsewhere
“Like a bullet out of a gun. His big paws had caught the dog before the dog could even flinch.”
― Michael Grant, quote from Plague
“Hilta laughed like someone who had thought hard about Life and had seen the joke.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Equal Rites
“Do you listen to the wolves, Seoman?” Jiriki asked. “It’s hard n-not to.” “They sing such fierce songs.” The Sitha shook his head. “They are like your mortal kind. They sing of where they have been, and what they have seen and scented. They tell each other where the elk are running, and who has taken whom to mate, but mostly they are merely crying ‘I am! Here I am!’ ”
― Tad Williams, quote from The Dragonbone Chair
“To an artist a metaphor is as real as a dollar.”
― Tom Robbins, quote from Another Roadside Attraction
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.