“Whoever knows you when you are young can look inside you and see the person you once were, and maybe still are at certain times.”
“My father had told me that no matter how comfortable we might feel, we must live like fish, unattached to any land. Wherever there was water, we would survive. Some fish could stay in the mud for months, even years, and when at last there was a high flooding tide, they would swim away, a dark flash, remembered only by their own kind. So perhaps the stories they told of our people were true: no net could hold us.”
“As I turned the pages, I felt as if there were bees on my fingertips, for I had never felt so alive as when reading.”
“Then I understood that when someone begins to tell you her story, you are entwined together. Perhaps even more so if the ending hasn’t been divulged.”
“I only had access to him when we were together in the library, and I loved them both -the library and my father- equally and without question.”
“You couldn’t see love, or touch it, or taste it, yet it could destroy you and leave you in the dark, chasing after your own destiny.”
“I knew what happened in fairy tales. The strong survived while the weak were eaten alive.”
“Then let us be among those who hope that the future will be less cruel than the past.”
“I KNEW I MUST do all as I was told, yet something burned inside me, a seed of defiance that must have derived from a long-ago ancestor. Perhaps my mind was inflamed from the books I had read and the worlds I had imagined.”
“But I was not a mouse. In the fields where I walked, I was much more interested in the actions of the hawks.”
“A woman who knows what she wants, Adelle always told me, is likely to receive it.”
“With every step I wished myself away to another life, one lived far from here.”
“There is the outside of a story, and there is the inside of a story, he told me as we sat in his library one afternoon. One is the fruit and may be delicious, but the other is the seed.”
“I didn’t understand that when I closed myself to her, I took a part of her bitterness inside me. It was green and unforgiving, and as it grew it made me more like her. It gave me my strength, but it gave me my weakness as well.”
“werewolves were members of the old Danish families who owned slaves. Their transformation was God’s punishment for their wrongdoings. You could spy their teeth and claws at night, even when they were in their human guise, so they often wore gloves and scarves, even in the hottest times of the year.”
“Then I understood that when someone begins to tell you her story, you are entwined together. Perhaps even more so if the ending hasn't been divulged. It was exactly like dreaming the same dream, then waking too soon and never finding out what had happened.”
“My father told us that our people had been slaves in the desert and because God had seen fit to set us free, none among us should ever own another man. It had been written that every man belonged to God and no one else. But did women belong to God or to the men of their family? They could not own property or businesses; only their husbands could have that honor.”
“You lose people sometimes, you know. You don’t expect to, but then it happens and you can’t get them back.” We”
“... he discovered that the stars in the southern world were far brighter than any he had known, and that beneath the water there lived creatures so immense they created waves, as if they were masters of the ocean, and of the universe, and of fate.”
“he thought of Jesus as a great teacher, a rebel who refused to see the poor and disenfranchised mistreated.”
“Perhaps in the cold my heart would freeze and I would care nothing for those I was forced to abandon.”
“I had never felt so alive as when reading.”
“There is the outside of a story, and the inside of a story... One is the fruit and may be delicious, but the other is the seed.”
“I hope you're happy," she said to Mrs. James.
"Happiness is for fools." Helena James shrugged. "So I wish that for you.”
“From the time I could read, I found solace in my father's library...At the ages of ten and eleven and twelve I would have preferred to remain in the library...”
“After living with his art in my own chamber, I saw there was more than mere mimicry, and that art was a world unto itself, with its own symbols and language. A leaf seen in a certain light might be gray or violet as well as purple, and a latticework of twigs might easily turn red as the sky paled above the city.”
“Even now as the graves of these women went untended, and their passings unmourned, the seeds they had scattered turned the hillsides red and orange from May to September. Some called the pirates’ bounty flame trees, but to us they were known as flamboyant trees, for no one could ignore their glorious blooms, with flowers that were larger than a man’s open hand. Every time I saw them I thought of these lost women. That was what happened if you waited for love.”
“I had been blind to the pain of others until I had my own burden to carry.”
“A horse is a quadruped, and quadruped's latin for beast, as everybody that's gone through grammar knows, or else what's the use in having grammars at all?”
“Of evils current upon earth The worst is money. Money 'tis that sacks Cities, and drives men forth from hearth and home; Warps and seduces native innocence, And breeds a habit of dishonesty.”
“So I moved toward Tyrese. He gave me the ghetto glare. On the street, it fazed me; in here, it was like the big bad wolf blowing at the brick house. “Was your son born at this hospital?” I asked. Tyrese didn’t reply. “Was your son born here, yes or no?” He calmed down enough to say “Yeah.” “Is he circumcised?” Tyrese relit the glare. “You some kind of faggot?” “You mean there’s more than one kind?” I countered. “Was he circumcised here, yes or no?” Grudgingly, Tyrese said, “Yeah.” I”
“But I want to be near you always," he reminded her.
"But you'll lose everyone else, and..."
"I want forever with you." Seth lifted her chin so he was able to look directly into her eyes. "The rest will fall into place if I can be with you.”
“I kissed her," he explained, aggrieved.
"Mmm, yes, I had the dubious pleasure of witnessing that, ah-hem, overly public occurrence." Lyall sharpened his pen nib, using a small copper blade that ejected from the end of his glassicals.
"Well! Why hasn't she done anything about it?" the Alpha wanted to know.
"You mean like whack you upside the noggin with that deadly parasol of hers? I would be cautious in that area if I were you.”
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.