“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
Meghan O'Rourke
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“When you're living through them, events are nothing more than stuff that happens. You're not thinking about significance. Significance only comes when you look back at your life.”
― James Howe, quote from The Misfits
“Her time with Charles had been brief and intense, consisting of stolen moments behind her stepfather's woodshed or clandestine meetings with her dashing British officer dressed as a civilian farmer so as not to arouse suspicion. But she had never spent a night with him. Had never lain her head atop his chest and fallen asleep while he stroked her hair and told her stories about his childhood, never dreamed in the protective circle of his embrace, never laughed until the tears rolled helplessly down her cheeks — as she had done last night when Gareth had told her what he and the Den of Debauchery members had done to a certain statue back in Ravenscombe ... She laughed just thinking about it. Purple parts, indeed! She”
― Danelle Harmon, quote from The Wild One
“Perhaps she saw before her a lifetime of walking on the ruined earth and chose instead a single moment in the air.”
― Carolyn Parkhurst, quote from The Dogs of Babel
“A small town is nothing but eyes and gaping maw; it pecks at its own like a flock of vicious birds.”
― Sonya Hartnett, quote from Surrender
“Have you ever met a slave, Luke?" she asked. The question took me aback, coming from a black person. I stammered out a no. She said, "Really? You've never been to a mall? You've never watched shoppers with their carts piled with soda and microwaveable food? You've never stayed in a hotel where a fifty-year-old Mexican mother of six scrubs your shit stains off the toilet bowl? You've never watched TV for five hours straight?”
― Ryan Boudinot, quote from Blueprints Of The Afterlife
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Last Night in Twiste...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.
