“She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.”
― Annie Dillard, quote from The Living
“She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live. She read books as one would breathe ether, to sink in and die.”
― Annie Dillard, quote from The Living
“Naturally society cherished itself alone; it prized what everyone agreed was precious, despised what everyone agreed was despicable, and ignored what no one mentioned-all to it's own enhancement, and with the loud view that these bubbles and vapors were eternal and universal. If June had stressed to Mabel that she was going to die, would she have learned to eat with a fork? Society's loyal members, having sacrificed their only lives to it's caprices, hastened to entrap the next generation into agreement, so their follies would not have been in vain and they could all go down together, blind and well turned out. The company, the club, and the party had offered him a position like bait, and he bit. He had embedded himself in the company like a man bricked into a wall, and whirled with the building's maps, files, and desks,senselessly, as the planet spun and death pooled on the cold basement floors. Who could blame him?- when people have always lived so. Now , however, he saw the city lifted away, and the bricks and files vaporized; he saw the preenings of men laid low, and the comforts of family scattered. He was free and loosed on the black beach.”
― Annie Dillard, quote from The Living
“How loose he seemed to himself, under the stars! The spaces between the stars were pores, out of which human meaning evaporated.”
― Annie Dillard, quote from The Living
“No child on earth was ever meant to be ordinary, and you can see it in them, and they know it, too, but then the times get to them, and they wear out their brains learning what folks expect, and spend their strength trying to rise over those same folks.”
― Annie Dillard, quote from The Living
“When, over the following months, Minta Randall found that Eustace apparently reciprocated her profoundest and most secret feelings, she thought she had never lived before, or knew what life could hold, or what absolute power one heart could exert upon another. She perceived no trace, fossil, or echo of this wild sensation anywhere around her, and concluded that she and Eustace had invented it together, which would be, she thought, just like them.”
― Annie Dillard, quote from The Living
“How we spend our days is,how we spend our lives.”
― Annie Dillard, quote from The Living
Annie Dillard
Born place: in Pittsburgh, PA, The United States
Born date April 30, 1945
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“Cooking is an art; it has in it personality, and even perversity, for the definition of an art is that which must be personal and may be perverse.”
― G.K. Chesterton, quote from What's Wrong with the World
“It is the mynd, that maketh good or ill,
That maketh wretch or happie, rich or poore:
For some, that hath abundance at his will,
Hath not enough, but wants in greatest store;
And other, that hath litle, askes no more,
But in that litle is both rich and wise.
For wisedome is most riches; fooles therefore
They are, which fortunes doe by vowes deuize,
Sith each vnto himselfe his life may fortunize.”
― Edmund Spenser, quote from The Faerie Queene
“They held the funeral on the second day, with the town coming to look at Miss Emily beneath a mass of bought flowers with the crayon face of her father musing profoundly above the bier and the ladies sibilant and macabre; and the very old men - some in their brushed Confederate uniforms - on the porch and the lawn, talking of Miss Emily as if she had been a contemporary of theirs, believing that they had danced with her and courted her perhaps, confusing time with its mathematical progression, as the old do, to whom all the past is not a diminishing road but, instead, a huge meadow which no winter ever quite touches, divided from them now by the narrow bottle-neck of the most recent decade of years.”
― William Faulkner, quote from A Rose for Emily and Other Stories
“I don’t understand,” said the scientist, “why you lemmings all rush down to the sea and drown yourselves.” “How curious,” said the lemming. “The one thing I don’t understand is why you human beings don’t.”
― James Thurber, quote from The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
“perceiving the world” entails a process of apprehending whatever presents itself to us. This particular “perceiving” is done with our senses and with our will.”
― Carlos Castaneda, quote from A Separate Reality
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The End of History a...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.
