“Sometimes you don't even know what you want until you find out you can't have it.”
― Meghan O'Rourke, quote from The Long Goodbye
“Nothing prepared me for the loss of my mother. Even knowing that she would die did not prepare me. A mother, after all, is your entry into the world. She is the shell in which you divide and become a life. Waking up in a world without her is like waking up in a world without sky: unimaginable.”
― Meghan O'Rourke, quote from The Long Goodbye
“One of the grubby truths about a loss is that you don't just mourn the dead person, you mourn the person you got to be when the lost one was alive. This loss might even be what affects you the most.”
― Meghan O'Rourke, quote from The Long Goodbye
“The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.”
― Meghan O'Rourke, quote from The Long Goodbye
“In the months that followed my mother's death, I managed to look like a normal person. I walked the street; I answered my phone; I brushed my teeth; most of the time. But I was not OK. I was in grief. Nothing seemed important. Daily tasks were exhausting. Dishes piled in the sink, knives crusted with strawberry jam. At one point I did not wash my hair for ten days. I felt that I had abruptly arrived at a terrible, insistent truth about the impermanence of everyday.”
― Meghan O'Rourke, quote from The Long Goodbye
“I remember my brother as such a gentle and loving child, the best big brother a girl could hope for, but I remember when I started to sense our family's world tilting on its axis, the kaleidoscope turning, when things started to go wrong. From then on, it was like we were still ourselves, but our lives played out as though reflected back to us from a funhouse mirror.”
― quote from Breathless
“The doors of decision are one-way only. You can never go back. I’ll never be the same person again.”
― Ronald H. Balson, quote from Once We Were Brothers
“In his funeral oration the spokesman of the most artistic and critical of European nations, Ernest Renan, hailed him as one of the greatest writers of our times: ‘The Master, whose exquisite works have charmed our century, stands more than any other man as the incarnation of a whole race,’ because ‘a whole world lived in him and spoke through his mouth.’ Not the Russian world only, we may add, but the whole Slavonic world, to which it was ‘an honour to have been expressed by so great a Master.”
― Ivan Turgenev, quote from Rudin
“I returning South on horseback, by Rome, Allatoona, Marietta, Atlanta, and Madison, Georgia. Stockton stopped at Marietta, where he resided. Hammond took the cars at Madison, and I rode alone to Augusta, Georgia, where I left the horse and returned to Charleston and Fort Moultrie by rail. Thus by a mere accident I was enabled to traverse on horseback the very ground where in after-years I had to conduct vast armies and fight great battles. That the knowledge thus acquired was of infinite use to me, and consequently to the government, I have always felt”
― William T. Sherman, quote from Memoirs of General W.T. Sherman
“Purity of execution will only add to the artistic aspects of the whole wretched mess.”
― John O'Brien, quote from Leaving Las Vegas
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.