Quotes from The Last of August

“I tended to spend too much time with my favorite things, loved them too hard until I wore them down. After a while, they became more like a shorthand for who I was and less like things I actually enjoyed.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, quote from The Last of August

“She looked like a whisper made real.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, quote from The Last of August

“Maybe this is what happened when you built a friendship on a foundation of mutual disaster. It collapsed the second things righted themselves, left you desperate for the next earthquake.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, quote from The Last of August

“Friendship I understood. There had to be an arc there, some kind of story that the two of you were telling just by being together. Something made up from what you wanted from the world and what you got instead. A story you reminded each other of when you needed to feel understood.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, quote from The Last of August

“You know, I told Dad not to tell you about that whole near-death thing. I said that you'd overreact, and I was right."
There was a long pause, and then the shouting got somewhat louder.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, quote from The Last of August

“I’m a teenage girl. He is my boy best friend. We would be everything to each other until we couldn’t.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, quote from The Last of August

“dicere quae puduit, scribere jussit amor”
― Brittany Cavallaro, quote from The Last of August

“There’s not a lot you can control, you know. Where you’re born. Who your family is. What people want from you, and what you are, underneath it all. When you have so little say in it all, I think it’s important to exercise a measure of control when given the opportunity.” She smiled, ducking her head. “So I blow things up.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, quote from The Last of August

“Do you know what love is? I’ll tell you: it is whatever you can still betray.” THE LOOKING GLASS WAR, JOHN LE CARRÉ”
― Brittany Cavallaro, quote from The Last of August

“There needs to be a German compound word for feeling both guilty and enraged. - Jamie”
― Brittany Cavallaro, quote from The Last of August

“Charlotte. There's a girl on the roof. She says her name is Lena... She says she brought the helicopter you wanted? - August”
― Brittany Cavallaro, quote from The Last of August

“She smiled at me, that one particular smile I hardly ever saw, the one that could open padlocks, Yale locks, bank vaults, the one that was a trapdoor down into everything.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, quote from The Last of August

“It’s strange to grieve for your former self, and still I think it’s something that any girl understands. I’ve shed so many skins, I hardly know what I am now—muscle, maybe, or just memory. Perhaps just the will to keep going.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, quote from The Last of August

“But these—they weren’t case updates so much as letters, the kind you wrote to someone you knew so well you could imagine them beside you, even when they were across an ocean, living out another life.”
― Brittany Cavallaro, quote from The Last of August

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Popular quotes

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“Men are not content with a simple life: they are acquisitive, ambitious, competitive, and jealous; they soon tire of what they have, and pine for what they have not; and they seldom desire anything unless it belongs to others.”
― Will Durant, quote from The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World's Greatest Philosophers

“What good is it if you read Plato and never clean your toilet? asked my mother, reverting to the values of Jubilee.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Lives of Girls and Women

“The Mongols loved competitions of all sorts, and they organized debates among rival religions the same way they organized wrestling matches. It began on a specific date with a panel of judges to oversee it. In this case Mongke Khan ordered them to debate before three judges: a Christian, a Muslim, and a Buddhist. A large audience assembled to watch the affair, which began with great seriousness and formality. An official lay down the strict rules by which Mongke wanted the debate to proceed: on pain of death “no one shall dare to speak words of contention.” Rubruck and the other Christians joined together in one team with the Muslims in an effort to refute the Buddhist doctrines. As these men gathered together in all their robes and regalia in the tents on the dusty plains of Mongolia, they were doing something that no other set of scholars or theologians had ever done in history. It is doubtful that representatives of so many types of Christianity had come to a single meeting, and certainly they had not debated, as equals, with representatives of the various Muslim and Buddhist faiths. The religious scholars had to compete on the basis of their beliefs and ideas, using no weapons or the authority of any ruler or army behind them. They could use only words and logic to test the ability of their ideas to persuade. In the initial round, Rubruck faced a Buddhist from North China who began by asking how the world was made and what happened to the soul after death. Rubruck countered that the Buddhist monk was asking the wrong questions; the first issue should be about God from whom all things flow. The umpires awarded the first points to Rubruck. Their debate ranged back and forth over the topics of evil versus good, God’s nature, what happens to the souls of animals, the existence of reincarnation, and whether God had created evil. As they debated, the clerics formed shifting coalitions among the various religions according to the topic. Between each round of wrestling, Mongol athletes would drink fermented mare’s milk; in keeping with that tradition, after each round of the debate, the learned men paused to drink deeply in preparation for the next match. No side seemed to convince the other of anything. Finally, as the effects of the alcohol became stronger, the Christians gave up trying to persuade anyone with logical arguments, and resorted to singing. The Muslims, who did not sing, responded by loudly reciting the Koran in an effort to drown out the Christians, and the Buddhists retreated into silent meditation. At the end of the debate, unable to convert or kill one another, they concluded the way most Mongol celebrations concluded, with everyone simply too drunk to continue.”
― Jack Weatherford, quote from Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World

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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.