“And perhaps there is a limit to the grieving that the human heart can do. As when one adds salt to a tumbler of water, there comes a point where simply no more will be absorbed.”
― Sarah Waters, quote from The Little Stranger
“I seem to have been cross, somehow, all the time when I was a girl. I was horrid... You're supposed to grow out of horridness, aren't you? I don't think I ever grew out of mine. Sometimes I think it's still inside me, like something nasty I swallowed that got stuck.”
― Sarah Waters, quote from The Little Stranger
“We see what a punishing business it is, simply being alive.”
― Sarah Waters, quote from The Little Stranger
“Yes, Emily Dickenson -- a rather exhausting poet, now I come to think of it. All that breathlessness and skipping about. What's wrong with nice, long lines and a jaunty rhythm?”
― Sarah Waters, quote from The Little Stranger
“The subliminal mind has many dark, unhappy corners, after all. Imagine something loosening itself from one of those corners. Let's call it a---a germ. And let's say conditions prove right for that germ to develop---to grow, like a child in the womb. What would this little stranger grow into? A sort of shadow-self, perhaps: a Caliban, a Mr Hyde. A creature motivated by all the nasty impulses and hungers the conscious mind had hoped to keep hidden away: things like envy and malice and frustration...”
― Sarah Waters, quote from The Little Stranger
“modern dances always seem to me so vulgar. So much hopping about; like a scene from a mental ward!”
― Sarah Waters, quote from The Little Stranger
“I'm like a weather-vane, I start twitching when the wind's on the turn.”
― Sarah Waters, quote from The Little Stranger
“Her eyes were still closed, and in the darkness, in her dark dress and coat, she seemed an assemblage of angular fragments...”
― Sarah Waters, quote from The Little Stranger
“...I made what can only have been a few rather idiotic observations about the bricks.”
― Sarah Waters, quote from The Little Stranger
“...keeping their gimlet eyes on one's affairs...”
― Sarah Waters, quote from The Little Stranger
“He was just the sort of man to have faith in leeches. Leeches, and licorice, and cod-liver oil.”
― Sarah Waters, quote from The Little Stranger
“One need not be a chamber to be haunted.”
― Emily Dickinson, quote from The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
“Of course a lot of guys were ashamed. Somebody said let's go out and fight for liberty and so they went out and got killed without ever once thinking of liberty. And what kind of liberty were they fighting for anyway? How much liberty and whose kind of liberty? Were they fighting for the liberty of eating free ice cream cones all their lives or for the liberty of robbing anybody they pleased whenever they wanted to or what? You tell a man he can't rob and you take away some of his liberty. You've got to. What the hell does liberty mean anyhow? It's a word like house or table or any other word. Only it's a special kind of word. A guy says house and he can point to a house to prove it. But a guy says come on let's fight for liberty and he can't show you liberty. He can't prove the thing he's talking about so how in the hell can he be telling you to fight for it? No sir anybody who went out and got into the front line trenches to fight for liberty was a goddamn fool and the guy who got him there was a liar.”
― Dalton Trumbo, quote from Johnny Got His Gun
“America, my love, you are sunlight falling through trees. You are laughter that breaks through sadness. You are the breeze on a too-war day. You are clarity in the midst of confusion.
You are not the world, but you are everything that makes the world good. Without you, my life would still exist, but that's all it would manage to do.
You said that to get things right one of us would have to take a leap of faith. I think I've discovered the canyon that must be leaped, and I hope to find you waiting for me on the other side.
I love you, America.
Yours forever,
Maxon”
― Kiera Cass, quote from The One
“The tune was too ingrained for Mortenson to consider the novelty of this moment- an American, lost in Pakistan, singing a German hymn in Swahili.”
― Greg Mortenson, quote from Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Time
“Don’t be a pawn in somebody’s game,” she said. “Find the attitude which gives you the maximum strength and the maximum dignity, no matter what else is going on.”
― Anne Rice, quote from The Witching Hour
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.