“Shay," she said. "Shay McKenna," as if trying out his name, saying it for the first time. "Did you ever love me, even a little?"
Love you?" He turned his head and brushed his lips across her fingers. "I'm loving you now, mo chridh. After I'm dead, a thousand years from now, whatever's left of me, be it a soul or just a handful of dust, that will be loving you.”
― Penelope Williamson, quote from The Passions of Emma
“We are all of us both light and dark, do you not find it so, Miss Tremayne? Wanting in our hearts to do right and able to do wrong. And so it’s the choices we’ve made, surely, that make of us what we are”
― Penelope Williamson, quote from The Passions of Emma
“When Emma sat down on a rock to take off her shoes and stockings, he said to her, “You’ve Yankee feet. Long and skinny.”
“And you’ve Irish feet,” she said, right back at him. “Big and always in your mouth”
― Penelope Williamson, quote from The Passions of Emma
“We are all of us both light and dark, do you not find it so, Miss Tremayne? Wanting in our hearts to do right and able to do wrong. And so it’s the choices we’ve made, surely, that make of us what we are.”
― Penelope Williamson, quote from The Passions of Emma
“She’d just spent the last hours engaged in endless small talk. Now, when it mattered so much, she seemed to have no words to say, or even breath to speak them with. All her life she’d always had such trouble with words: finding them and losing them, hoarding them and wasting them.”
― Penelope Williamson, quote from The Passions of Emma
“You can't imbibe someone's success by f*cking them.”
― Joanna Russ, quote from The Female Man
“Followed rules, not dreams. Never again. - Margaret Hellerstein”
― quote from Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure
“The desires of the heart...are as crooked as a corkscrew.”
― Robert Stone, quote from Dog Soldiers
“At high school I was never comfortable for a minute. I did not know about Lonnie. Before an exam, she got icy hands and palpitations, but I was close to despair at all times. When I was asked a question in class, any simple little question at all, my voice was apt to come out squeaky, or else hoarse and trembling. When I had to go to the blackboard I was sure—even at a time of the month when this could not be true—that I had blood on my skirt. My hands became slippery with sweat when they were required to work the blackboard compass. I could not hit the ball in volleyball; being called upon to perform an action in front of others made all my reflexes come undone. I hated Business Practice because you had to rule pages for an account book, using a straight pen, and when the teacher looked over my shoulder all the delicate lines wobbled and ran together. I hated Science; we perched on stools under harsh lights behind tables of unfamiliar, fragile equipment, and were taught by the principal of the school, a man with a cold, self-relishing voice—he read the Scriptures every morning—and a great talent for inflicting humiliation. I hated English because the boys played bingo at the back of the room while the teacher, a stout, gentle girl, slightly cross-eyed, read Wordsworth at the front. She threatened them, she begged them, her face red and her voice as unreliable as mine. They offered burlesqued apologies and when she started to read again they took up rapt postures, made swooning faces, crossed their eyes, flung their hands over their hearts. Sometimes she would burst into tears, there was no help for it, she had to run out into the hall. Then the boys made loud mooing noises; our hungry laughter—oh, mine too—pursued her. There was a carnival atmosphere of brutality in the room at such times, scaring weak and suspect people like me.”
― Alice Munro, quote from Dance of the Happy Shades
“Don’t you wear glasses, George?” “Not anymore. I had my eyes lasered.” Can you say midlife crisis? Radial keratotomy is the new red Porsche.”
― Lisa Scottoline, quote from Dirty Blonde
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.