“didn't think of it.” She supposed she should have”
― Iris Johansen, quote from The Killing Game
“He stopped. “You're upset. I'll shut up and leave you”
― Iris Johansen, quote from The Killing Game
“Having escaped the Dark Ages in which animals were mere stimulus-response machines, we are free to contemplate their mental lives. It is a great leap forward, the one that Griffin fought for. But now that animal cognition is an increasingly popular topic, we are still facing the mindset that animal cognition can be only a poor substitute of what we humans have. It can’t be truly deep and amazing. Toward the end of a long career, many a scholar cannot resist shining a light on human talents by listing all the things we are capable of and animals not. From the human perspective, these conjectures may make a satisfactory read, but for anyone interested, as I am, in the full spectrum of cognitions on our planet, they come across as a colossal waste of time. What a bizarre animal we are that the only question we can ask in relation to our place in nature is “Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the smartest of them all?”
― Frans de Waal, quote from Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?
“Anyone could be clever. Anyone could be smart. Anyone could be taught. But not everyone was kind."
Chapter 1 · Page 10 · Location 202”
― Louise Penny, quote from A Great Reckoning
“Peppier n. The waiter at a fancy restaurant whose sole purpose seems to be walking around asking diners if they want ground pepper.”
― Steven Pinker, quote from The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature
“Back when I was in college, I wrote a short story called “The Albuquerque Door” for a junior year creative writing class. It dealt with several of the same ideas in this book, but with a much smaller cast of characters and on a much less talented level. Needless to say, it didn’t go over well with the instructor’s “literary” tastes, and while I didn’t agree with him on a lot of his points, it left me feeling bad enough about the story that I just filed it away.”
― Peter Clines, quote from The Fold
“From what I can see of humans, you often destroy wonderful things in the pursuit of something that your delusions make you think is more wonderful.”
― A.L. Davroe, quote from Nexis
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.