“Men, I thought, were more trouble than they were worth. Really, one should stick to books where one sees the hero coming a mile off.”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets
“Like all intelligent people, she functions very well in extreme disorder.”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets
“Mama was amazing like that; I spent most of my teenage years assuming that she knew nothing about me, and all of my twenties realizing that she knew everything.”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets
“There's never any warning that something extraordinary is about to happen, is there?”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets
“If I could take people out of their heads for a little while, if I could give them a dose of fantasy, that was all that mattered. You can't put a price on escape.”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets
“Would it ever, ever leave? I had become used to the ache now; it was with me all the time, and never seemed to lessen. Time was no healer, I decided, but it was a great accommodator.”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets
“As he started 'Whisky and Gin' and the cheering and the shrieking filled my senses, I thought of Mama, shattered by the war and Papa's death and I wished with all my heart that she could understand how it felt to be us that night - how it felt to be eighteen and unbeaten, eighteen and alive.”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets
“I didn't hear you come in. I was away with the ghosts of my beautiful youth.”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets
“The odd thing about Mama was that she liked to think of herself as a doomy sort of person, but there was a natural optimism in her that refused to be defeated, however hard she squashed it down, and I know that she never lost faith completely.”
― Eva Rice, quote from The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets
“For the more a man restricts himself the closer he is, conversely, to infinity.”
― Stefan Zweig, quote from Chess Story
“Do you always focus on what you're giving up, rather than what you'll be gaining? Some things are worth pursuit regardless of the cost.”
― Stephanie Garber, quote from Caraval
“riot squads were ready to go into action. Although these young English boys (many of them civilians themselves little more than a year ago, and with only a very sketchy idea of the problems of administering Imperial”
― Paul Scott, quote from The Jewel in the Crown
“I suppose the truth is simply that it was possible for benefits like these to accrue only to a Negro lucky enough to remain in the poor but relatively benign atmosphere of Virginia. For here in this worn-out country with its decrepit little farms there was still an ebb and flow of human sympathy—no matter how strained and imperfect—between slave and master, even an understanding (if sometimes prickly) intimacy; and in this climate a black man had not yet become the cipher he would become in the steaming fastnesses of the far South but could get off in the woods by himself or with a friend, scratch his balls and relax and roast a stolen chicken over an open fire and brood upon women and the joys of the belly or the possibility of getting hold of a jug of brandy, or pleasure himself with thoughts of any of the countless tolerable features of human existence.”
― William Styron, quote from The Confessions of Nat Turner
“It is, at the most basic level, a bundle of contradictions: a desire for power that strips you of all power. A gesture of strength that divests you of all strength.”
― Marya Hornbacher, quote from Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia
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.