Quotes from The Long Goodbye

“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

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Popular quotes

“Father argued that society as a whole must come to be organized on a different basis than greed, for while material interests gained somewhat by the institutionalized deification of pure selfishness, ordinary men and women lost everything by it.”
― Russell Banks, quote from Cloudsplitter

“Un giorno dirai a te stesso. Sono stanco, vado a sedermi, e andrai a sederti. Poi dirai a te stesso, Ho fame, ora mi alzo e mi preparo da mangiare. Ma non ti alzerai. Dirai a te stesso. Ho fatto male a sedermi, ma visto che mi sono seduto resterò seduto ancora un poco, poi mi alzerò e mi preparerò da mangiare. Ma non ti alzerai e non ti preparerai da mangiare. / Guarderai il muro per un poco, poi dirai a te stesso, Ora chiuderò gli occhi, forse dormirò un poco, dopo andrà meglio, e li chiuderai. E quando li riaprirai il muro non ci sarà più. Intorno a te ci sarà il vuoto infinito, tutti i morti di tutti i tempi non basterebbero, risuscitando, a colmarlo, e sarai come un sassolino in mezzo alla steppa. / Sì, un giorno saprai cosa vuol dire, sarai come me, solo che tu non avrai nessuno, perchè tu non avrai avuto pietà di nessuno e non ci sarà più nessuno di cui aver pietà.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Endgame

“Keth, power brings with it the need to make moral judgments; history proves that. You have no choice but to make those decisions.”
― Mercedes Lackey, quote from Oathbreakers

“When God wanted to guarantee his promises, he gave his word, a rock-solid guarantee—God can’t break his word. And because his word cannot change, the promise is likewise unchangeable.”
― Eugene H. Peterson, quote from The Message Remix (Bible in Contemporary Language)

“But first of all he is a woodsman, and you aren't a woodsman unless you have such a feeling for topography that you can look at the earth and see what it would look like without any woods or covering on it. It's something like the gift all men wish for when they or young-- or old-- of being able to look through a woman's clothes and see her body, possibly even a little of her character.”
― Norman Maclean, quote from Young Men and Fire

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About BookQuoters

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.