“the enduring struggle to capture in words the infinite possibilities of a life not lived.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from The Last Time They Met
“I have always been faithful to you if faithful means the experience against which everything else has been measured.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from The Last Time They Met
“That I have no right to be jealous is irrelevant. It is a human passion: the sick, white underbelly of love.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from The Last Time They Met
“The weight of his losses finally too much to bear.
But not before he has known the unforgiving light of the equator, a love that exists only in his imagination, and the enduring struggle to capture in words the infinite possibilities of a life not lived.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from The Last Time They Met
“It was probably not so unusual to be a different person with a different man, for all parts were authentically within, waiting to be coaxed out by one person or another”
― Anita Shreve, quote from The Last Time They Met
“She felt with the shiver the rare sensation that she was exactly where she should be. She was an idea, a memory, one perfect possibility out of an infinite number.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from The Last Time They Met
“For this reason poetry is more philosophical and more serious than history; poetry utters universal truths, history particular statements. The universal truths concern what befits a person of a certain kind to say or do in accordance with probability and necessity—and that is the aim of poetry, even if it makes use of proper names.* A particular statement tells us what (for example) Alcibiades* did or what happened to him. In the case of comedy this is already manifest: the poets make up the story on the basis of probability and then attach names to the characters at random;”
― Aristotle, quote from Poetics
“A gang of lads, morally neglected, and in that respect inferior to the intermediate class, but in good physical training, attack and throw another set, trained neither physically nor morally, and make off with their food and their dainty clothes. What more is called for than a laugh?”
― Plotinus, quote from The Enneads
“Don’t try to build Me into your life anymore. Instead, build your life around Me.”
― Eric Ludy, quote from When God Writes Your Love Story
“Time spent looking back in anger is time wasted”
― Mary Stewart, quote from The Last Enchantment
“What is madness but nobility of the soul at odds with circumstance.”
― Theodore Roethke, quote from The Collected Poems
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.