“If you've had good gin on a hot day in Southern California with the people you love, you forget Nebraska. The two things cannot coexist. The stronger, better of the two wins.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“Nothing comforted Sabine like long division. That was how she had passed time waiting for Phan and then Parsifal to come back from their tests. She figured the square root of the date while other people knit and read. Sabine blamed much of the world's unhappiness on the advent of calculators.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“People made her tired. The way they were easy with one another, the way they seemed so natural, only made her sad.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“I don’t want to wind up some old woman who talks to her rabbit,” she said to Rabbit, who was chewing so furiously he didn’t even bother to lift his head.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“The general wisdom around here is if you can’t get it at Wal-Mart, you don’t need it.” Sabine looked up at the brown building, which was itself the size of another parking lot. “I’ve never actually been in one of these.” “Go on,” Kitty said. Sabine shook her head. “I’ve just never had any reason to.” Kitty stubbed out her cigarette and replaced her mitten. “Well, you are in for a treat.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“Kitty stopped the cart and put in two three-packs of paper towels. “Sale.” Sabine nodded. Was $2.49 a good price? To know if paper towels were a deal this time, you’d have to remember what they cost last time. Sabine could never remember.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“She could read the patterns, knew at a glance a Melas from a Konya, a Ladik from a Sivas. She loved the Ladik.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“to never have to look at someone who was remembering when you have made such a concerted effort to forget.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“If someone were to have pressed a sheet of glass down over the top of Alliance, Nebraska, in winter, it would have resembled an ant farm. Everything was a tunnel eaten neatly, carefully into the snow. The tunnel of the streets branching into the narrower tunnels of driveways and carved-out sidewalks. The snow banked over cars, lawn furniture, porches, like frozen animal carcasses stored for future need.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“She put no stock in dreams. To her they were just a television left on in another room.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“For twenty-two years Sabine had told her stories to one person, so that the action and the telling had become inseparable. What was left was half a life, the one where she lived it but had nothing later to give shape to the experience.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“I don’t want to wind up some old woman who talks to her rabbit,” she said to Rabbit,”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“The idea that she would have the opportunity to get over something thrilled her. The”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“She didn’t even think about the drive. She was from Los Angeles; driving was simply part of it.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“...Nebraska was white, a page as still as fallen snow. It was not crosshatched with roads, overrun with the hard lines of interstate systems. It was a state on which you could make lists, jot down phone numbers, draw pictures.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“He began the patter, the Ladies-and-gentlemen-I-want-to-welcome-you-to. Dot and Bertie Fetters sat forward in their seats, so thrilled to be entertained that for the moment they forgot that the purpose of their trip was to mourn. But then that was the point of magic, to take people in, make them forget what was real and possible. They were so utterly game that when Sam Spender asked if there was anyone in the audience from out of town, they raised their hands, not knowing that everyone in Los Angeles was from out of town.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
“Nothing comforted Sabine like long division. That was how she had passed time waiting for Phan and then Parsifal to come back from their tests. She figured the square root of the date while other people knit and read. Sabine blamed much of the world’s unhappiness on the advent of calculators.”
― Ann Patchett, quote from The Magician's Assistant
Ann Patchett
Born place: in Los Angeles, CA, The United States
Born date December 2, 1963
See more on GoodReads
“A dream is a strange thing. Pictures appear with terrifying clarity, the minutest details engraved like pieces of jewelry, and yet we leap unawares through huge abysses of time and space. Dreams seem to be controlled by wish rather than reason, the heart rather than the head–and yet, what clever, tricky convolutions my reason sometimes makes while I’m asleep! Things quite beyond comprehension happen to reason in dreams!”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Dream of a Ridiculous Man
“Children would beg for a peppermint drop each time he walked into town, and they'd follow behind, asking for a second and a third. When he died suddenly, while working late at his office, every boy and girl in the village reported smelling mint in the night air, as if somehing sweet had passed them right by.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from Here on Earth
“Why do we care about Lizzie Borden, or Judge Crater, or Lee Harvey Oswald, or the Little Big Horn?
Mystery!
Because of all that cannot be known. And what if we did know? What if it were proved—absolutely and purely—that Lizzie Borden took an ax? That Oswald acted alone? That Judge Crater fell into Sicilian hands? Nothing more would beckon, nothing would tantalize.
The thing about Custer is this: no survivors. Hence, eternal doubt, which both frustrates and fascinates. It’s a standoff.
The human desire for certainty collides with our love of enigma. And so I lose sleep over mute facts and frayed ends and missing witnesses.
God knows I’ve tried.
Reams of data, miles of magnetic tape, but none of it satisfies even my own primitive appetite for answers. So I toss and turn. I eat pints of ice cream at two in the morning.
Would it help to announce the problem early on? To plead for understanding? To argue that solutions only demean the grandeur of human ignorance? To point out that absolute knowledge is absolute closure? To issue a reminder that death itself dissolves into uncertainty, and that out of such uncertainty arise great temples and tales of salvation?
I prowl and smoke cigarettes.
I review my notes.
The truth is at once simple and baffling: John Wade was a pro. He did his magic, then walked away. Everything else is conjecture. No answers, yet mystery itself carries me on.”
― Tim O'Brien, quote from In the Lake of the Woods
“I wonder if all women secretly fantasize, like me, about what it would be like to be an extraordinary beauty and bitchy as you wanna be.”
― Lori Lansens, quote from The Girls
“If people were not by nature insane and resistant to self-improvement or therapy,”
― Jeff VanderMeer, quote from City of Saints and Madmen
Noble Beginnings
Miss Peregrine's Pec...
Sex and the City
Wolfsong
10 Steps to Earning...
The Grift of the Mag...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.
