“She feared that she’d missed something, because there were so many parallels with her own story, and she could not help but see in her head the small memories her mind would offer as tantalizing, but—in the end unsatisfying, glimpses of what may have occurred.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Light in the Ruins
“She closed her eyes and tried desperately to swim through the mist that enveloped her memories. She was near here and then she wasn’t. She was whole and then she was wounded. Forever scarred. And in between? Unknowable, it seemed. Absolutely unknowable.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Light in the Ruins
“They studied the way the world
changed at morning and dusk and imagined how the sun might fall on the skin of a goddess.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Light in the Ruins
“In her experience, dead children, unlike dead adults, always looked as if they were sleeping - though she understood that there was an element of wishful thinking whenever she had come across corpses that young.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Light in the Ruins
“At night, when no one's there, the dancers and the musicians on the walls come to life and there's a glamorous ball. Sometimes their lights are so bright I can see the glow from my bedroom.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Light in the Ruins
“But she insists the family hadn’t a choice. Not true. We always have choices. Isn’t that what Dante teaches us?
I really have become quite the Dante scholar: “There is no greater sorrow than to recall our time of joy in wretchedness.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Light in the Ruins
“Serafina may think I’m a crazy person, but I’m not. She has her scars, too—and not only the ones I saw when she turned her head and her hair fell aside. We are both living out our lives in a Purgatorio. The difference? I arrived from the Paradiso, once young and married and so in love. But Serafina, she who was born alone in a fever dream of fire? She whose very skin is a tapestry of loss? Serafina, of course, arrived from the Inferno.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Light in the Ruins
“Even a magnificent city such as Florence becomes more intriguing if there is a demon at work in the alleys.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Light in the Ruins
“In America, Walt Disney opened an amusement park.
And in Florence, someone was savaging the remnants of a Tuscan nobleman’s family.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Light in the Ruins
“And so Cristina submerged her ears beneath the water and the world grew a little quieter; her hair fanned out atop the plane and she ran her fingers through it and was reminded of a goddess in a Renaissance painting. Her mind wandered far from the villa and the ruins and her unshakable sense that her world was about to change.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Light in the Ruins
“If they veered left, it would feel to them as if they were sinking into the earth: the path would narrow as the ground around them rose up to their hips, then shoulders, then heads. The walls would turn from sod to stone, and it would seem as if they were walking inside a crag in a cliff. The sky would be reduced to a thin swath of blue, broken in parts by the branches of the trees that grew above them along the sides of this ancient channel.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Light in the Ruins
“The Beatrice that obsessed Dante was a Florentine named Bice di Folco Portinari. Envision this moment (and, in all fairness, I am envisioning it the way Henry Holiday did in his exquisite nineteenth-century painting): Bice is walking beside the Arno River, dressed in white, the fabric clinging to her legs and outlining her slender thighs, and there is Dante. He meets her at the corner of one of the bridges that span
the river. His left hand, at first glimpse, is moving casually toward his hip; it is only on a more careful study that one realizes his hand is actually going up to his heart. Meanwhile, his right hand is resting on the bridge’s waist-high stone balustrade, as if Bico’s beauty is such that he needs to steady himself when he beholds her.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Light in the Ruins
“So you’re positive the killer is a man.”
“Yes, I think my gender can take responsibility for this one. Women don’t cut out other women’s hearts.”
“We can.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Light in the Ruins
“Seriously,” the banker went on, “what do you investigate? I have a feeling you do more than find stray kittens and bring home lost babies.”
“Murder.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Light in the Ruins
“We always have choices. Isn’t that what Dante teaches us?”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Light in the Ruins
“You know the type—will give herself to the first nobleman in a uniform who comes calling with a couple of eggs and a piece of rat meat.”
“You’re selling yourself short.”
“I’ve just sold myself for rat meat,” she said, and she turned from him and lit the stove.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Light in the Ruins
“During the war, I promised the dead I would never forget them. I stared at them, barely able to move myself. Pretended I was one of them. To this day I can recall the light in the ruins.”
― Chris Bohjalian, quote from The Light in the Ruins
Chris Bohjalian
Born place: in White Plains, New York, The United States
See more on GoodReads
“I want you in the worst possible way. You’re the drug that offers me relief…that energizes me again…that soothes me…that delivers me sweet oblivion. You’re my drug of choice, Catherine. You’re my addiction. My euphoria.”
― Mia Asher, quote from Arsen: A Broken Love Story
“Shared suffering, she’d found, was no guarantee of intimacy.”
― Michel Faber, quote from Under the Skin
“Marcus looked down. “Ah, man! This was my favorite shirt. Who tore it?” he asked, trying to pull the ragged edges together.”
― Ripley Patton, quote from Ghost Hand
“Listening is the most dangerous thing of all, listening means knowing, finding out about something and knowing what’s going on, our ears don’t have lids that can instinctively close against the words uttered, they can’t hide from what they sense they’re about to hear, it’s always too late.”
― Javier Marías, quote from A Heart So White
“IF YOU ASK ME A PERSON DOESNT GET ENOUGH SURPRISES IN A LIFE TIME.”
― James Patterson, quote from First Love
Whistling Past the G...
The Silver Star
The Pairing
The Last Hour of Gan...
Essays in Love
Going Down in FlamesBookQuoters 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.
