“I'd been hurt, and in response I had acted violently, destroying a little of myself each time I did so.”
― John Connolly, quote from The Killing Kind
“There is a dark resource within all of us, a reservoir of hurt and pain and anger upon which we can draw when the need arises. Most of us rarely, if ever, have to delve too deeply into it. That is as it should be, because dipping into it costs and you lose a little of yourself each time, a small part of all that is good and honorable and decent about you. Each time you use it you have to go a little deeper, a little further down into the blackness. Strange creatures move through its depths, illuminated by a burning light from within and fueled only by the desire to survive and to kill. The danger in diving into that pool, in drinking from that dark water, is that one day you may submerge yourself so deeply that you can never find the surface again. Give in to it and you're lost forever.”
― John Connolly, quote from The Killing Kind
“You must be careful where you step.
And you must be ready for what you might find.”
― John Connolly, quote from The Killing Kind
“The nature of humanity, its essence, is to feel another's pain as one's own, and to act to take that pain away,. There is a nobility in compassion, a beauty in empathy, a grace in forgiveness.”
― John Connolly, quote from The Killing Kind
“..her lips were as red as a stop light..”
― John Connolly, quote from The Killing Kind
“There are people whose eyes you must avoid, whose attention you must not draw to yourself. They are strange, parasitic creatures, lost souls seeking to stretch across the abyss and make fatal contact with the warm, constant flow of humanity. They live in pain and exist only to visit that pain on others.”
― John Connolly, quote from The Killing Kind
“When I started in homicide, the Dead Sea was just sick.”
― John Connolly, quote from The Killing Kind
“He has all the weaknesses that come with a conscience, but none of the strengths.”
― John Connolly, quote from The Killing Kind
“The past never truly dies. It is there, waiting, just below the surface of the now.”
― John Connolly, quote from The Killing Kind
“Okay," I said hoarsely as the blood left my head and headed south for the winter.”
― John Connolly, quote from The Killing Kind
“what human beings did: they tried and failed and failed again, and they kept failing until either they got it right at last or time ran out and they had to settle for what they had.”
― John Connolly, quote from The Killing Kind
“wants to accept that someone close might have taken his or her own life. Too much blame accrues to those left behind for it to be accommodated so easily.”
― John Connolly, quote from The Killing Kind
“Deborah Mercier couldn’t have looked more like a WASP if her coat had been striped with yellow and her eyes had been on the sides of her head. She”
― John Connolly, quote from The Killing Kind
“There are places where years have no meaning, where only a hair's breadth of history separates the present from the past. Standing there on that bleak hillside, a young man in a place where other young men had died, it was possible to feel a connection to that past, a sense that in some place further back on the the stream of time these young men were still fighting, and still dying, that they would always be fighting this battle, in this place, over and over again, with ever the same end.”
― John Connolly, quote from The Killing Kind
“Lester Bargus was what people liked to call 'two pounds of shit in a one-pound bag.”
― John Connolly, quote from The Killing Kind
“Love can fuck up desire, I’ll agree to that,” I said, and I believed that. If, on the occasions when someone I had sex with remained after orgasm, and an edge of friendship was being suggested to me—as, say, we might lie, though rarely, talking—if, then, at those times, all desire faded.”
― John Rechy, quote from After the Blue Hour
“sometimes the thing you think is going to ruin your life is the thing that saves you.”
― Jane Green, quote from Saving Grace
“And if I want to hurt the person, is that hate? - Black
No, it's pain. You want to inflict pain on the person who caused you to hurt. I think if you hate someone, you just want them gone. - Pink”
― L.J. Shen, quote from Vicious
“The door opened a crack, and then Lassiter, in his game gear, stepped inside the room. As he held something out, Mary couldn’t see what it was— Wait a minute, was that a Snickers bar? “What are you doing?” she blurted as he cautiously approached. The beast snapped to attention, its jowls curling up in a snarl at the angel. But Lassiter was undaunted—so not a shocker. “Here,” he said. “Have a Snickers. You’re not yourself when you’re hangry.” There was a heartbeat of a pause. And then she couldn’t help it. She had to start laughing. “Really. Really?”
― J.R. Ward, quote from Blood Vow
“It’s a marvelous thing, the ocean. For some reason when two people sit together looking out at it, they stop caring whether they talk or stay silent. You never get tired of watching it. And no matter how rough the waves get, you’re never bothered by the noise the water makes by the commotion of the surface - it never seems too loud, or too wild.”
― Banana Yoshimoto, quote from Tsugumi
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.