Quotes from The Lacuna

“The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Memories do not always soften with time; some grow edges like knives.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“...nothing momentous comes in this world unless it comes on the shoulders of kindness.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Mr. Shepherd, ye cannot stop a bad thought from coming into your head. But ye need not pull up a chair and bide it sit down." - Mrs. Brown”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“you can't really know the person standing before you, because always there is some missing piece”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“You force people to stop asking questions, and before you know it they have auctioned off the question mark, or sold it for scrap. No boldness. No good ideas for fixing what's broken in the land. Because if you happen to mention it's broken, you are automatically disqualified.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Lies are infinite in number, and the truth so small and singular.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“The past is all we know of the future.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“War so conspicuously benefits rich men and kills the poor ones.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“This is what it means to be alone: everyone is connected to everyone else, their bodies are a bright liquid life flowing around you, sharing a single heart that drives them to move all together. If the shark comes they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“He needs to go rub his soul against life.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“The most important part of a story is the piece of it you don't know.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Everyone should get dirt on his hands each day. Doctors, intellectuals. Politicians, most of all. How can we presume to uplift the life of the working man, if we don't respect his work?”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“There are some who'd hardly lift a finger for kindness, but they would haul up a load of rock to dump on some soul they think's been too lucky.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Soli, let me tell you. The most important thing about a person is always the thing you don't know.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“In the long run, most of us spend about fifteen minutes total in the entanglements of passion, and the rest of our days looking back on it, humming the tune.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“What we end up calling history is a kind of knife, slicing down through time. A few people are hard enough to bend its edge. But most won't even stand close to the blade. I'm one of those. We don't bend anything.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Bitter words normally evaporate with the moisture of breath, after a quarrel. In order to become permanent, they require transcribers, reporters, complicit black hearts.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“How strange to read of a place in a book, and then stand on it, listen to the birds sing, and spit on the cobbles if you want.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“It's a great freedom to give up on love, and get on with everything else.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Does a man become a revolutionary out of the belief he's entitled to joy rather than submission?”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“You know reviewers, they are the wind in their own sails. ”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“But newspapers have a duty to truth,' Van said.
Lev clucked his tongue. 'They tell the truth only as the exception. Zola wrote that the mendacity of the press could be divided into two groups: the yellow press lies every day without hesitating. But others, like the Times, speak the truth on all inconsequential occasions, so they can deceive the public with the requisite authority when it becomes necessary.'
Van got up from his chair to gather the cast-off newspapers. Lev took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. 'I don't mean to offend the journalists; they aren't any different from other people. They're merely the megaphones of the other people.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Our house is like an empty cigarette packet, lying around reminding you what's not in it.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Because nothing wondrous can come in this world unless it rests on the shoulders of kindness.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“An imperfectly remembered life is a useless treachery. Every day, more fragments of the past roll around heavily in the chambers of an empty brain, shedding bits of color, a sentence or a fragrance, something that changes and then disappears. It drops like a stone to the bottom of the cave.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“Mother could go for one year without food, but not one day without her lip sticks.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“A novel! Why do you say this won't liberate anyone? Where does any man go to be free, whether he is poor or rich or even in prison? To Dostoyevsky! To Gogol!”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

“No reporter worth his buttons will let the facts intrude on a good story. ”
― Barbara Kingsolver, quote from The Lacuna

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Popular quotes

“— Feio! Onde já se viu homem feio ou bonito? A beleza do homem, desgraçada, não está na cara, está é no caráter, na sua posição social, em suas posses. Onde já se viu homem rico ser feio?”
― Jorge Amado, quote from Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands

“In a society of free men the preservation of life and health are ends, not means. They do not enter into any process of accounting means.”
― Ludwig von Mises, quote from Human Action: A Treatise on Economics

“was it scripted by God or I am playing with my life.”
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“Well, there's nothing," McDonald said. "You get born, and you nurse on lies, and you get weaned on lies, and you learn fancier lies in school. You live all your life on lies, and then maybe when you're ready to die, it comes to you — that there's nothing, nothing but yourself and what you could have done. Only you ain't done it, because the lies told you there was something else. Then you know you could of had the world, because you're the only one that knows the secret; only then it's too late. You're too old.”
― John Williams, quote from Butcher's Crossing

“A Nobel Prize winner was asked how he became a scientist. He said that every day after school, his mother would ask him not what he learned but whether he asked a good question today. That, he said, was how he became a scientist.”
― quote from The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century

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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.