“You had to invent something. It's not possible to leave it blank. The mind
won't let you.”
― Paul Auster, quote from The Music of Chance
“Once a man begins to recognize himself in another, he can no longer look on that person as a stranger.”
― Paul Auster, quote from The Music of Chance
“It's just another word for the same thing. You want to believe in some hidden purpose. You're trying to persuade yourself there's a reason for what happens in the world. I don't care what you call it--God or luck or harmony-- it all comes down to the same bullshit. It's a way of avoiding the facts, of refusing to look at how things really work.”
― Paul Auster, quote from The Music of Chance
“It was a dizzying prospect—to imagine all that freedom, to understand how little it mattered what choice he made.”
― Paul Auster, quote from The Music of Chance
“I know you don't love me but that doesn't mean I'm the wrong girl for you.”
― Paul Auster, quote from The Music of Chance
“Due artisti nella stessa casa potrebbero essere troppi. Qualcuno deve occuparsi dell’aspetto pratico delle cose, eh, Willie? Ci vuole gente di tutti i tipi per fare il mondo.”
― Paul Auster, quote from The Music of Chance
“کافیست زندگی دیگری برای خود تجسم کنید تا قلب تان هم چنان بتپد”
― Paul Auster, quote from The Music of Chance
“بعضی ها یکشنبه ها می رن کلیسا، اما برای ما پوکر جمعه شب ها مهم بود. نمی دونین اون وقتا چه قدر آخر هفته هامونو دوست داشتیم! بذارین بهتون بگم برای از بین بردن دغدغه های کار هیچ دوایی بهتر از یک دست قمار دوستانه نیس.”
― Paul Auster, quote from The Music of Chance
“What do you mean, blindly? That baby is a very sentient creature… That baby sees the world with a completeness that you and I will never know again. His doors of perception have not yet been closed. He still experiences the moment he lives in.”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test
“It was as if the press in America, for all its vaunted independence, were a great colonial animal, an animal made up of countless clustered organisms responding to a central nervous system. In the late 1950's (as in the late 1970's) the animal seemed determined that in all matters of national importance the proper emotion, the seemly sentiment, the fitting moral tone, should be established and should prevail; and all information that muddied the tone and weakened the feeling should simply be thrown down the memory hole. In a later period this impulse of the animal would take the form of blazing indignation about corruption, abuses of power, and even minor ethical lapses, among public officials; here, in April of 1959, it took the form of a blazing patriotic passion for the seven test pilots who had volunteered to go into space. In either case, the animal's fundamental concern remained the same: the public, the populace, the citizenry, must be provided with the correct feelings! One might regard this animal as the consummate hypocritical Victorian gent. Sentiments that one scarcely gives a second thought to in one's private life are nevertheless insisted upon in all public utterances. (And this grave gent lives on in excellent health.)”
― Tom Wolfe, quote from The Right Stuff
“Imagination, she figured, just wasn’t up to the task of understanding unique and foreign sensations. It knew only how to dampen or augment what it already knew. It would be like telling someone what sex felt like, or an orgasm. Impossible. But once you felt it yourself, you could then imagine varying degrees of this new sensation.”
― Hugh Howey, quote from Wool Omnibus
“Astrid had gone to look at the burn zone. Doing the right thing.
Kids had yelled at her. Demanded to know why she had let it happen. Demanded to know where Sam was. Deluged her with complaints and worries and crazy theories until she had retreated.
She’d hidden out after that. She’d refused to answer the door when kids knocked. She had not gone to her office. It would be the same there.
But through the day it had eaten at her. This feeling of uselessness. A feeling of uselessness made so much worse by the growing realization that she needed Sam. Not because they were up against some threat. The threat was mostly past now.
She needed Sam because no one had any respect for her. There was only one person right now who could get a crowd of anxious kids to settle down and do what needed to be done.
She had wanted to believe that she could do that. But she had tried. And they hadn’t listened.
But Sam was still nowhere to be seen. So despite everything it was still on her shoulders. The thought of it made her sick. It made her want to scream.”
― Michael Grant, quote from Lies
“You can't tell how heavy somebody else's load is just from looking. The Lord doesn't give us more than we can carry”
― Lalita Tademy, quote from Cane River
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.