“Whenever you look back and say "if" you know you're in trouble. There is no such thing as "if". The only thing that matters is what really happened.”
― D.J. MacHale, quote from The Merchant of Death
“Not just chubby fat, I'm talkin' gordo”
― D.J. MacHale, quote from The Merchant of Death
“Whenever you look back and say, "If," you know you're in trouble. There's no such thing as "if." The only thing that counts is what really happened.”
― D.J. MacHale, quote from The Merchant of Death
“where is here, when is now??”
― D.J. MacHale, quote from The Merchant of Death
“I felt as if I learned a few things. I learned that it's sometimes okay to think like a weenie, so long as you don't act like one—at least not all the time. I learned that it's okay to be wrong, as long as you can admit it and are willing to listen to those who may know better.”
― D.J. MacHale, quote from The Merchant of Death
“This is the way it was ment to be”
― D.J. MacHale, quote from The Merchant of Death
“We may not have made our grand statement, but we will still have our battle. We are armed with tak and we will triumph. Your efforts have been in vain. The battle is about to begin.”
― D.J. MacHale, quote from The Merchant of Death
“...[T]he bottom line is that I made the right decision. So maybe it's okay to think like a weenie sometimes, so long as you don't act like one. There's grand philosophy in there someplace.”
― D.J. MacHale, quote from The Merchant of Death
“...[A] friend is someone who gives you trust because they want to, not because they have to.”
― D.J. MacHale, quote from The Merchant of Death
“He'd often come here to think. Occasionally he even used the toilet for its intended purpose, but mostly he came here to get away.”
― D.J. MacHale, quote from The Merchant of Death
“The way I figure it, everyone gets a miracle. Like, I will probably never be struck by lightening, or win a Nobel Prize, or become the dictator of a small nation in the Pacific Islands, or contract terminal ear cancer, or spontaneously combust. But if you consider all the unlikely things together, at least one of them will probably happen to each of us. I could have seen it rain frogs. I could have stepped foot on Mars. I could have been eaten by a whale. I could have married the Queen of England or survived months at sea. But my miracle was different. My miracle was this: out of all the houses in all the subdivisions in all of Florida, I ended up living next door to Margo Roth Spiegelman.”
― John Green, quote from Paper Towns
“On July 2, McCandless finished reading Tolstoy's "Family Happiness", having marked several passages that moved him:
"He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others...
I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books , music, love for one's neighbor - such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps - what more can the heart of a man desire?" ...”
― Jon Krakauer, quote from Into the Wild
“He had discovered that there was not just one God but many, and some were more than cruel — they were insane, and that changed all. Cruelty, after all, was understandable. With insanity, however, there was no arguing.”
― Stephen King, quote from Misery
“Sometimes you dream strange dreams, impossible and unnatural; you wake up and remember them clearly, and are surprised at a strange fact: you remember first of all that reason did not abandon you during the whole course of your dream; you even remember that you acted extremely cleverly and logically for that whole long, long time when you were surrounded by murderers, when they were being clever with you, concealed their intentions, treated you in a friendly way, though they already had their weapons ready and were only waiting for some sort of sign; you remember how cleverly you finally deceived them, hid from them; then you realize that they know your whole deception by heart and merely do not show you that they know where you are hiding; but you are clever and deceive them again—all that you remember clearly. But why at the same time could your reason be reconciled with such obvious absurdities and impossibilities, with which, among other things, your dream was filled? Before your eyes, one of your murderers turned into a woman, and from a woman into a clever, nasty little dwarf—and all that you allowed at once, as an accomplished fact, almost without the least perplexity, and precisely at the moment when, on the other hand, your reason was strained to the utmost, displaying extraordinary force, cleverness, keenness, logic? Why, also, on awakening from your dream and entering fully into reality, do you feel almost every time, and occasionally with an extraordinary force of impressions, that along with the dream you are leaving behind something you have failed to fathom? You smile at the absurdity of your dream and feel at the same time that the tissue of those absurdities contains some thought, but a thought that is real, something that belongs to your true life, something that exists and has always existed in your heart; it is as if your dream has told you something new, prophetic, awaited; your impression is strong, it is joyful or tormenting, but what it is and what has been told you—all that you can neither comprehend nor recall.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, quote from The Idiot
“I wondered why she craved this knowledge and found myself remembering that she was, after all, an anthropologist.”
― Elizabeth Kostova, quote from The Historian
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.