“I was perhaps as intensely naïve to think I could get a job working with the Yankees. But the lesson to me is that with a great deal of persistence and a little bit of common sense, even if the thing you’re chasing may not exist, you can sometimes will it into being.”
“that when we can celebrate and truly own what it is that makes us different, we’re able to find the source of our greatest creative power.”
“There was a nook in the house that contained what they called the Turkish Room, which was for intimate conversation. And when my mother had her sixth birthday, her grandmother led her into the Turkish Room. They were both named Inez. And on that day Big Inez gave Little Inez a plantation all her own. Two thousand acres. Then her little sister came running in and said, “Grandmother, can I have a plantation too?” And Big Inez looked down and said, “Child, your name is Alice. You were named for your Yankee grandmother. Go ask your Yankee grandmother for a plantation.”
“The great storyteller Frank O’Connor defined it best, saying once that every good story should end, in spirit, with the exact same words: “And everything that ever happened to me afterwards, I never felt the same about again.”
“Orwell’s famous lesson, “Autobiography is only to be trusted when it reveals something disgraceful. A man who gives a good account of himself is probably lying, since any life when viewed from the inside is simply a series of defeats.”
“How could I forget you, Darryl? You called me God.”
“you have been foolish by exalting yourself or if you've been scheming, put your hand over your mouth.”
“Perhaps because my father never got a college degree himself, he continued to view people who had one with a respect that bordered on awe. In most cases they didn’t deserve it. My father could run circles around most academics and he would have done very well in college, if he’d been able to go.”
“A day may come when all hope is lost; when the oceans run red with our blood, and our darkest hour is upon us— and when it comes, that red day of reckoning, we turn, my dears, not to our rulers-in-good-times, but to our leaders-in-bad-times.”
“By distancing myself from the world, I was squandering my destiny: such was the malediction of recognizing the world’s infamy but not allowing myself to spit in its face.”
“Women's mutual understanding comes from the fact that they identify themselves with each other; but for the same reason each is against the others.”
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.