“I guessed it was a migratory bird, too innocent to be wary of the spiders in the jungle grass. It worried be to think that we were a little like that bird”
― Paul Theroux, quote from The Mosquito Coast
“And father said "I never wanted this. I'm sick of everyone pretending to be old Dan Beavers in his L. L. Bean moccasins, and his Dubbelwares, and his Japanese bucksaw -- all these fake frontiersmen with their chuck wagons full of Twinkies and Wonderbread and aerosol cheese spread. Get out the Duraflame log and the plastic cracker barrel, Dan, and let's talk self-sufficiency!”
― Paul Theroux, quote from The Mosquito Coast
“Nature is crooked. I wanted right angles and straight lines. Ice! Oh, why do they all drip? You cut yourself opening a can of tuna fish and you die. One puncture in your foot and your life leaks out through your toe. What are they for, moose antlers? Get down on all fours and live. You're protected on your hands and knees. It's either that or wings.”
― Paul Theroux, quote from The Mosquito Coast
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”
― Paul Theroux, quote from The Mosquito Coast
“He used the word savages with affection, as if he liked them a little for it. In his nature was a respect for wildness. He saw it as a personal challenge, something that could be put right with an idea or a machine. He felt he had the answer to most problems, if anyone cared to listen.”
― Paul Theroux, quote from The Mosquito Coast
Paul Theroux
Born place: in Medford, Massachusetts, The United States
Born date April 10, 1941
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“No existe nada realmente hermoso si no es lo que no puede servir para nada. Todo lo que es útil es feo, porque es la expresión de alguna necesidad y las del hombre son ruines y desagradables, igual que su pobre y enfermiza naturaleza. El rincón más útil de una casa son las letrinas.”
― Théophile Gautier, quote from Mademoiselle de Maupin
“If you love a flower that lives on a star, it is sweet to look at the sky at night. All the stars are a-bloom with flowers...”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, quote from Der kleine Prinz
“When people fail to follow these bizarre, secret rules, and the machine does the wrong thing, its operators are blamed for not understanding the machine, for not following its rigid specifications. With everyday objects, the result is frustration. With complex devices and commercial and industrial processes, the resulting difficulties can lead to accidents, injuries, and even deaths. It is time to reverse the situation: to cast the blame upon the machines and their design. It is the machine and its design that are at fault. It is the duty of machines and those who design them to understand people. It is not our duty to understand the arbitrary, meaningless dictates of machines.”
― Donald A. Norman, quote from Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition (Revised)
“It had that kind of open-ended fear to it - like that feeling you get when you're driving and you see a cop. And you're not speeding. You don't have drugs. But you're just thinking, I hope he doesn't notice I'm driving.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“She had only to open a door, nothing but a door between the words,just large enough for her and Farid to pass through....”
― Cornelia Funke, quote from Sangre de tinta
Just the Sexiest Man...
Sula
Bright Side
Exquisite Corpse
The Screaming Stairc...
The 100BookQuoters 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.
