“What I wanted, frankly, was someone who would argue me out of the things that I was thinking.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Pale Horse
“I avoided my own friends and acquaintances, yet the loneliness of my existence was insupportable.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Pale Horse
“She looked at nobody, but just before she went out, she raised her eyes and took a speedy glance at me. There was something in that looks that startled me - though it was difficult to describe why. There was malice in it, and a curious intimate knowledge. I felt that, without effort, and almost without curiosity, she had known exactly what thoughts were in my mind.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Pale Horse
“Life is always dangerous—never forget that. In the end, perhaps, not only great natural forces, but the work of our own hands may destroy it.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Pale Horse
“Being in love has a very bad effect on men - it seems to addle their wits.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Pale Horse
“Your criminal is someone who wants to be important, but who never will be important, because he’ll always be less than a man.”
― Agatha Christie, quote from The Pale Horse
“If you lie to yourself about your own pain, you will be killed by those who will claim you enjoyed it.”
― Alice Walker, quote from Possessing the Secret of Joy
“If you've never known someone your own age who's died, you can't imagine what it feels like. It's as if you were walking on a glass floor and it suddenly shatters and now you're falling and falling and there's broken glass in the air all around you and no bottom in sight.”
― Todd Strasser, quote from Wish You Were Dead
“Some people make a bad bed, they just have to lie in it.”
― Virginia Euwer Wolff, quote from Make Lemonade
“Once you have given up the ghost, everything follows with dead certainty, even in the midst of chaos. From the beginning it was never anything but chaos: it was a fluid which enveloped me, which I breathed in through the gills. In the substrata, where the moon shone steady and opaque, it was smooth and fecundating; above it was a jangle and a discord. In everything I quickly saw the opposite, the contradiction, and between the real and the unreal the irony, the paradox. I was my own worst enemy. There was nothing I wished to do which I could just as well not do. Even as a child, when I lacked for nothing, I wanted to die: I wanted to surrender because I saw no sense in struggling. I felt that nothing would be proved, substantiated, added or subtracted by continuing an existence which I had not asked for. Everybody around me was a failure, or if not a failure, ridiculous. Especially the successful ones. The successful ones bored me to tears. I was sympathetic to a fault, but it was not sympathy that made me so. It was purely negative quality, a weakness which blossomed at the mere sight of human misery. I never helped anyone expecting that it would do me any good; I helped because I was helpless to do otherwise. To want to change the condition of affairs seemed futile to me; nothing would be altered, I was convinced, except by a change of heart, and who could change the hearts of men? Now and then a friend was converted: it was something to make me puke. I had no more need of God than He had of me, and if there were one, I often said to myself, I would meet Him calmly and spit in His face.”
― Henry Miller, quote from Tropic of Capricorn
“It's clear that politeness to one's elders can't always be justified on the basis of the elder's superior wisdom. It's just that it's not attractive to see a young person answering an older person back.”
― Zoë Heller, quote from What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal]
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.