Quotes from The Man Who Fell to Earth

“The strange thing about television is that it doesn't tell you everything.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from The Man Who Fell to Earth

“In meeting Betty Jo he had learned that there was a large substratum of society that was totally unaffected by this middle-class prototype, that a huge and indifferent mass of persons had virtually no ambitions and no values whatever.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from The Man Who Fell to Earth

“The house was an immense place, isolated in a great wooded area. The building and the trees seemed wet, glistening dimly in the grey morning light that was much like the light of midday of Anthea. It was refreshing to his over-sensitive eyes. He liked the woods, the quiet sense of life in them, and the glistening moisture - the sense of water and of fruitfulness that this earth overflowed with, even down to the continual trilling and chirping sounds of the insects. It would be an endless source of delight compared to his own world, with the dryness, the emptiness, the soundlessness of the broad, empty deserts between the almost deserted cities where the only sound was the whining of the cold and endless wind that voiced the agony of his own, dying people.....”
― Walter Tevis, quote from The Man Who Fell to Earth

“and I live alone everywhere. Altogether”
― Walter Tevis, quote from The Man Who Fell to Earth

“Do you realize that you will not only wreck your civilization, such as it is, and kill most of your people; but that you will also poison the fish in your rivers, the squirrels in your trees, the flocks of birds, the soil, the water? There are times when you seem, to us, like apes loose in a museum, carrying knives, slashing the canvases, breaking the statuary with hammers.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from The Man Who Fell to Earth

“Did they ruin your mind when they ruined your eyes, Mr Newton?’ Newton”
― Walter Tevis, quote from The Man Who Fell to Earth

“little and ran away if a girl tried to touch him. Or maybe he was queer—anybody who sat around reading all the time and looked like he did… But he didn’t talk like a queer.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from The Man Who Fell to Earth

“He was sick, sick from the long dangerous trip he had taken, sick from all the medicine —the pills, the inoculations, the inhaled gases — sick from worry, the anticipation of crisis, and terribly sick from the awful burden of his own weight. He had known for years that when the time came, when he would finally land and begin to effect that complex, long-prepared plan, he would feel something like this. The place, however much he had studied it, however much he had rehearsed his part in it, was so incredibly alien — the feeling, now the he could feel — the feeling was overpowering. He lay down in the grass and became very sick.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from The Man Who Fell to Earth

“He began to see a kind of beauty in the strangeness of the field, too. It was quite different from what he had been taught to expect —as he had already discovered, were many of the things in this world—yet there weas pleasure for him now in its alien colors and textures, its new sights and smells. In sounds, too; for his ears were very acute and he heard many strange and pleasant noises in the grass, the diverse rubbings and clickings of those insects that had survived the cold weather of early November; and even, with his head now against the ground, the very small, subtle murmurings in the earth itself.”
― Walter Tevis, quote from The Man Who Fell to Earth

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Popular quotes

“The crucial question, therefore, is not how to accomplish the final reconciliation. That messianic problem ought not to be taken out of God's hands. The only thing worse than the failure of some modern grand narratives of emancipation would have been their success! Merely by trying to accomplish the messianic task, the have already done too much of the work of the antichrist. In demasking anti-messianic projects that offer universal salvation, Lyotard helps us ask the right kind of question, which is not how to achieve the final reconciliation, but what resources we need to live in peace in the absence of the final reconciliation.”
― Miroslav Volf, quote from Exclusion & Embrace: A Theological Exploration of Identity, Otherness, and Reconciliation

“There's no paradise in love! It's--you're thinking in the wrong way. Love--the sort you're asking me for--is of the earth, earthy. Beautiful, maybe--sometimes it be like a gold mine that one digs into. But of the earth--earthy. Tis all wrong to speak of paradise. Love may be the nearest human beings can get--but it is still outside the gates--for it is human--easily lost--animal in the way it work, though more, much more than animal. Oftentimes it--uplifts, transports...but--but it should not be mistaken. It is a--a terrible mistake to pretend it is something quite different.”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Four Swans

“...three particular T-shirts with vulgar slang written on them that made the vein in his forehead poke out. It was a cute little vein and I grew fond of seeing it's public appearance while I walked behind him like a parade of humiliation.”
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“Continue to contaminate your own bed, and you will one night suffocate in your own waste. ” — Chief Seattle Suqwamish and Duwamish T”
― Kent Nerburn, quote from The Wisdom of the Native Americans: Including The Soul of an Indian and Other Writings of Ohiyesa and the Great Speeches of Red Jacket, Chief Joseph, and Chief Seattle

“the difficulties of making temperature experiments [on fully grown alligators] would be great and can be best left to the imagination.”)”
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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.