Quotes from The Last Word

“I was thinking what everyone is thinking all of the time: How can I make this last just a little bit longer?”
― Lisa Lutz, quote from The Last Word

“Finally, I'd like to thank my readers for staying with me all these years. I especially want to thank the ones who understand that the world isn't made up of happy endings, but messy, complicated, and untidy ones.”
― Lisa Lutz, quote from The Last Word

“I remember a time when my mind wouldn’t have been able to shut down, my cases churning so relentlessly that I could barely see the person standing right in front of me. I remember when it had to be me who solved the case, who figured out the riddle. Now I didn’t care who did it, how it came about, just as long as it was over. I’m tired of seeing all the rotten things one person does to another person. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not about to open a flower shop. But this is my dream: One day, I leave my job at my office and it doesn’t follow me home and haunt me in my sleep. Another dream: I don’t live in my brother’s basement apartment. After everything I’ve seen and done and mused about endlessly, I’m convinced of one thing: There’s more to life than this, and sometimes when I picture more, it looks like something so simple, like so much less.”
― Lisa Lutz, quote from The Last Word

“What it lacks in prostitution, it makes up for in drugs and public urination.”
― Lisa Lutz, quote from The Last Word

“I understand individuals and their personal motivations, but when those same individuals become a part of something bigger, some amorphous corporate ball of greed, I can't anticipate the logical next move, because it has long ago stopped being human. Your average human being has a conscience and the world is structured with checks and balances to shed light on that individual should he or she become something ugly and cruel. But a company can hide its corruption; the individuals responsible can sit innocently and united behind their desks for years before they are discovered. They are as guilty as the guy robbing the liquor store in the ski mask, only they're free to show their faces. I had no idea whether I should be looking for the worker bee or the nest, or both, and my nearsightedness cost my boss his job.”
― Lisa Lutz, quote from The Last Word

“No man or woman likes to be a fool, but here's the thing my mother taught me long ago, and it is a lesson that stuck. You can spend hours speculating on a man's motivations, trying to pinpoint what clue you missed, what missteps you made, when the relationship turned, or why he didn't like you as much as you thought he did. And you could sit around like a fool letting someone else hold court in your mind when you were hardly a blip on his radar. Or you can just let it go and look at the person in the rearview mirror and keep driving.
To be honest, my mother never had to have this talk with me. I was too private to share my youthful heartbreak publicly. But I remember once as a teenager watching my mother nurse Aunt Martie after a particularly brutal breakup. [...] My mother, finally, at her wits' end, grabbed Aunt Martie by the shoulders, shook her violently, and said, "The sexual revolution didn't happen so you could sit by the phone sobbing like some stupid little girl. Enough. Fucking pull yourself together. He's just one guy."
Maybe that was the part that always stuck. I never wanted my mother to look at me with such horrified disrespect.”
― Lisa Lutz, quote from The Last Word

“The problem is, I'm not sure I'm ready for anything. Everything you're supposed to do when you grow up. Move away from home, buy your own food and groceries, get married, have children. Sometimes even the easy part of all that seems impossible to me. And then I wonder what will happen ten, twenty years from now. Will I be a fifty-year-old adolescent, completely alone, still sponging off whatever family I've got left?”
― Lisa Lutz, quote from The Last Word

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Popular quotes

“That's how a thing starts out real then ends up just an idea.”
― Joyce Carol Oates, quote from Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang

“Sooo, I'm tired of people thinking I'm a freak. I know you can't relate to that but -"
"Get over it already, will ya?" Candace stood. "You're not Smellody anymore. You're pretty. You can get hot guys now. Tanned ones with good vision. Not geeky hose jousters." She shut the window. "Don't you ever want to use your lips as something other than veneer protectors?"

Melody felt a familiar pinch behind her eyes. Her throat dried. Her eyes burned. And then they came. Like salty little paratroopers, tears descended en masse. She hated Candace thought she had never made out with a boy. But how could she convince a seventeen-year-old with more dates than a fruitcake that Randy the Starbucks cashier (aka Scarbucks, because of his acne scars) was a great kisser? She couldn't.”
― Lisi Harrison, quote from Monster High

“To survive, you must tell stories.”
― Umberto Eco, quote from The Island of the Day Before

“I want to pull my hair back tight and smooth and make a big knot at the back that I can feel, she said. I want to have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr when I stroke her.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from In Our Time

“They came to a bend in the road where it turned more west than north, and there at the turn was a squat fir tree that for the last quarter mile Hadrian had suspected might be a bear.

Coincidentally, at the same time as they passed the tree, Hadrian finally reached the conclusion that Arcadius was senile. The man was old to be sure. Older than anyone he’d ever met. Older even than his father, who at the time of his departure was the oldest man in Hintindar-though everyone said he carried his age well. The professor didn’t carry his age well at all, and old folks sometimes went batty. One didn’t even need to be that old. Hadrian knew a warlord in the Gur Em who spoke of himself as if he were another person in the room. Sometimes he got in arguments to the point of refusing to speak to himself anymore and insisted others relay messages “to that idiot.” And the warlord was nowhere near Arcadius’s age. The best that could be said for Arcadius was that he carried his insanity well. So well in fact that it took Hadrian all the way to the bear tree to conclude the professor was crazy.

He had to be. There was just no sense in asking him to pair up with Royce.”
― Michael J. Sullivan, quote from The Crown Tower

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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.