“Eras are conveniences, particularly for those who never experienced them. We carve history from totalities beyond our grasp. Bolt labels on the result. Handles. Then speak of the handles as though they were things in themselves.”
“Because people who couldn’t imagine themselves capable of evil were at a major disadvantage in dealing with people who didn’t need to imagine, because they already were.”
“Encryption isn’t optional, when we address one another,” she said.”
“If you fancy resenting the tedious, I recommend intentional communities, particularly those led by charismatics.” “You”
“So now, in her day, he said, they were headed into androgenic, systemic, multiplex, seriously bad shit, like she sort of already knew, figured everybody did, except for people who still said it wasn't happening, and those people were mostly expecting the Second Coming, anyway.”
“Be quiet, darling. Let pattern recognition have its way.”
“Eras are conveniences, particularly for those who never experienced them. We carve history from totalities beyond our grasp. Bolt labels on the result. Handles. Then speak of the handles as though they were things in themselves.” “I’ve”
“Unstuck her in time, day-sleeping in her bedroom. How old was she? Seven, seventeen, twenty-seven? Dusk or dawn? Couldn’t tell by the light outside. Checked her phone. Evening. The house silent, her mother probably asleep. Out through the smell of her grandfather’s fifty years of National Geographic, shelved in the hall.”
“What Shaylene saw as Burton’s primary symptom of traumatic stress, Flynne thought, was his ongoing failure to ask her out.”
“And this other evening light, rainy, rose and silver, and to her left a river the color of cold lead. Dark tumble of city, towers in the distance, few lights.”
“Netherton was watching the intricate texture of her bustier, which resembled a microminiature model of some Victorian cast-iron station roof, its countless tiny panes filmed as by the coal smoke of fingerling locomotives, yet flexing as she breathed and spoke.”
“A few stray bits of Lego edged fitfully about among lower strata,”
“I have already told you of the sickness and confusion that comes with time travelling. —H. G. WELLS”
“It’s like wearing your cock ring to meet the pope, and making sure he sees it.”
“You're from the future, Mr Netherton?"
"Not exactly," he said. "I'm in the future that would result from my not being here. But since I am, it isn't your future. Here.”
“a chronic malcontent, albeit quite a purposeless one.”
“History had its fascinations, but could be burdensome.”
“Because people who couldn’t imagine themselves capable of evil were at a major disadvantage in dealing with people who didn’t need to imagine, because they already were. She’d said it was always a mistake, to believe those people were different, special, infected with something that was inhuman, subhuman, fundamentally other.”
“He gestured for it to sit. The bench vibrated briefly in anticipation, shedding drops of rain. The peripheral sat.”
“That evil wasn’t glamorous, but just the result of ordinary half-assed badness, high school badness, given enough room, however that might happen, to become its bigger self. Bigger, with more horrible results, but never more than the cumulative weight of ordinary human baseness.”
“Those fuckers,” Janice said, meaning the football players, “they get me doing hate Kegels.”
“terror should remain the sole prerogative of the state.”
“Conspiracy theory’s got to be simple. Sense doesn’t come into it. People are more scared of how complicated shit actually is than they ever are about whatever’s supposed to be behind the conspiracy.”
“Eras are conveniences, particularly for those who never experienced them. We carve history from totalities beyond our grasp. Bolt”
“Something stilled the part of him that knitted narrative, that grew the underbrush of lies in which he lived.”
“stray bits of Lego edged fitfully about among lower strata, like bright rectilinear beetles.”
“Reality television. It merged with politics. Then with performance art.” They walked on. “I think that already happened, back home,”
“but Leon wasn’t due any disability. Wasn’t, their mother said, like he could claim to have caught the dumbfuck there. Not”
“Children inherit the qualities of the parents, no less than their physical features. Environment does play an important part, but the original capital on which a child starts in life is inherited from its ancestors. I have also seen children successfully surmounting the effects of an evil inheritance. That is due to purity being an inherent attribute of the soul.
Polak and I had often very heated discussions about the desirability or otherwise of giving the children an English education. It has always been my conviction that Indian parents who train their children to think and talk in English from their infancy betray their children and their country. They deprive them of the spiritual and social heritage of the nation, and render them to that extent unfit for the service of the country. Having these convictions, I made a point of always talking to my children in Gujarati. Polak never liked this. He thought I was spoiling their future. He contended, with all the vigour and love at his command, that, if children were to learn a universal language like English from their infancy, they would easily gain considerable advantage over others in the race of life. He failed to convince me. I do not now remember whether I convinced him of the correctness of my attitude, or whether he gave me up as too obstinate. This happened about twenty years ago, and my convictions have only deepened with experience. Though my sons have suffered for want of full literary education, the knowledge of the mother-tongue that they naturally acquired has been all to their and the country’s good, inasmuch as they do not appear the foreigners they would otherwise have appeared. They naturally became bilingual, speaking and writing English with fair ease, because of daily contact with a large circle of English friends, and because of their stay in a country where English was the chief language spoken.”
“He kissed me back. It lasted just a moment, but he kissed me back, right away, without hesitation, as though we’d always been doing it.”
“Does anyone in this land act like they're supposed to?”
“You live and let live, eventually that becomes enough.”
“To be king means to accept that others will pay the price of your failures -- and even your successes.”
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.