“The definition of a beautiful woman is one who loves me.”
― quote from The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
“Instead of getting the house like Mount Vernon, they had moved into the little house on Greentree Avenue in Westport, and Betsy had become pregnant, and he had thrown the vase against the wall, and the washing machine had broken down. And Grandmother had died and left her house to somebody, and instead of being made vice-president of J. H. Nottersby, Incorporated, he had finally arrived at a job where he tested mattresses, was uneasy when his boss said he wanted to see him without explaining why, and lived in fear of an elevator operator.”
― quote from The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
“How smoothly one becomes, not a cheat, exactly, not really a liar, just a man who'll say anything for pay.”
― quote from The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
“I really don’t know what I was looking for when I got back from the war, but it seemed as though all I could see was a lot of bright young men in gray flannel suits rushing around New York in a frantic parade to nowhere. They seemed to me to be pursuing neither ideals nor happiness – they were pursuing a routine. For a long while I thought I was on the sidelines watching that parade, and it was quite a shock to glance down and see that I too was wearing a gray flannel suit.”
― quote from The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
“Believe me, I want you to have a good time,' he said gently, 'but people who have that primarily in mind rarely accomplish it.”
― quote from The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
“I could get a job in an advertising agency. I’ll write copy telling people to eat more cornflakes and smoke more and more cigarettes and buy more refrigerators and automobiles, until they explode with happiness.”
― quote from The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
“It doesn't really matter. Here goes nothing. It will be interesting to see what happens.”
― quote from The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
“Another statistical fact came to him then, a fact which he knew would be ridiculously melodramatic to put into an application for a job at the United Broadcasting Corporation, or to think about at all. He hadn’t thought about this for a long while. It wasn’t a thing he had deliberately tried to forget – he simply hadn’t thought about it for quite a few years. It was the unreal-sounding, probably irrelevant, but quite accurate fact that he had killed seventeen men.”
― quote from The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
“That had been the trouble with him and Betsy: what with his brooding about the past and worrying about the future, there had never been any present at all.”
― quote from The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
“A birth usually has more consequences than a death.”
― quote from The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit
“In a psychomantium glass topples darkness. Things appear as they really are, people appear as they really are. Visions are called from a point inside the mirror, from a point inside the mind.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, quote from White is for Witching
“Oh, poor baby,” she said, mimicking his drawl.
“Whew. You’re back. There was this other Susie here a minute ago, and she was really nice to me. She scared the shit out of me.”
She laughed. “They locked her back up in the loony bin.”
“Good, because there’s only one Susie for me—the one who calls me on my crap and doesn’t let me get away with jack shit. That’s the Susie I need. That’s the Susie I’ve missed coming home to over the last year.” He kissed her. “And that’s the Susie who’s going to leave a gaping hole in my heart and my life if she doesn’t give me another chance.”
― Marie Force, quote from Line of Scrimmage
“I hated how easily my feelings got involved in every single thing he did or said. I always thought maybe it intensified when we were apart, you know, like a celebrity you'd pine after from afar. But it only grew when we were together. Sometimes it felt like looking at his face and just accepting the way things were between us was the hardest thing in the world.”
― Karina Halle, quote from Dead Sky Morning
“You deicde, and you make our night what you want. Brilliant and ours. Stupid and theirs.”
― Arthur Phillips, quote from The Tragedy of Arthur
“The world is holy. Nature is holy. The body is holy. Sexuality is holy. The imagination is holy. Divinity is immanent in nature; it is within you as well as without. Most spiritual paths ultimately lead people to the understanding of their own connection to the divine. While human beings are often cut off from experiencing the deep and ever-present connection between themselves and the universe, that connection can often be regained through ceremony and community. The energy you put out into the world comes back.”
― Margot Adler, quote from Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America
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.