Quotes from The Reader

Traci Chee ·  442 pages

Rating: (5.3K votes)


“If you're reading this, then maybe you know you ought to read everything. And maybe you know you ought to read deeply. Because there's witchery in these words and spellwork in the spine.”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“Once there was, and one day there will be. This is the beginning of every story. “Once”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“This is a book, and a book is a world, and words are the seeds in which meanings are curled. Pages of oceans and margins of land are civilizations you hold in the palm of your hand. But look at your world and your life seems to shrink to cities of paper and seas made of ink. Do you know who you are, or have you been misled? Are you the reader, or are you the read?”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“But books are curious objects. They have the power to trap, transport, and even transform you if you are lucky. But in the end, books—even magic ones—are only objects pieced together from paper and glue and thread. That was the fundamental truth the readers forgot. How vulnerable the book really was. To fire. To the damp. To the passage of time. And to theft.”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“But books are curious objects. They have the power to trap, transport, and even transform you if you are lucky.”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader



“Home’s what you make it.” Nin shrugged. “Could be a ship. Could be what you carry around on your back day after day. Could be family. Or maybe just one person you love more than any other. That’s home.” The”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“Were they all just stories whose endings had already been written, the dates of their deaths pinned to the page with periods?”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“...clutching the Book to his chest, under his crossed arms, as if trying to press it into his ribs, until his lungs filled with letters and his heart became a pulsing paragraph.”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“You got a choice, Sef. Control your future, or let your future control you.” Above,”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“Sometimes you find things and you wish you hadn’t,” he said softly. “Sometimes you wish they’d stayed lost.” •”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader



“But being smart was overrated. Being stupid and brave and curious? Now that’s something stories are made of. Dimarion’s”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“If you didn't like your own life, you changed it. You ran away. You did something spectacular. you didn't steal someone else's story and pretend it was yours.”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“If anything could be a book, there was no telling what you could learn, if you knew what to look for. Smooth river stones spelled out across a mossy floor. Lines drawn in the sand. Or inscribed on the side of a fallen log, half-obscured by twigs and mulch: This is a book.”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“It was the most terrible sound in a world of terrible sounds, the kind of sound that haunts you in the late hours of the night when the darkness shutters you in and the cold creeps into you through the cracks. When you are suddenly gripped by the unwavering certainty that you are already dead--and gone forever.”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“In a world where the only evidence of your existence was a body subject to decay and the works you left behind when the body was gone, you tried all manner of things to convince yourself that your life had some meaning, some permanence.”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader



“It wouldn't give me more time here, but if I was part of something like that, maybe my life wouldn't be so small. Maybe I could make a difference before my time ran out. Maybe I'd matter.”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“Captain Reed eyed him thoughtfully. "I built my whole life around the stories they about me. You know what I learned?"

Archer shook his head.

"What you do makes you who you are....”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“It was years ago now, on a warm summer night,
When the boy came out of the sea.
His skin was blue and his hair was white,
And he was in love with me.
He was wild and true, and right then I knew
That he was in love with me.

In our ship we sailed for years on the ocean,
Unfettered and totally free.
And he gave all his days to his endless devotion,
For he was in love with me.
I called it a phase and made endless delays,
Though he was in love with me.

One day the waves swept him right off the ship
And dropped him into the blue.
As his skin turned to water, his hair into fish,
He asked if I loved him too.
Too late I called through the wind and the water,
'I was always in love with you.'
I was always in love with you.”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“Los libros son máquinas del tiempo y rompecabezas y llaves de cerrojos que ni siquiera sabíamos que existían en lo profundo de nuestro corazón.”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“Some people said there was a secret society trained precisely for that purpose, toiling away generation after generation, poring over the book and copying it down, harvesting knowledge like sheaves of wheat, as if they could survive on sentences and supple paragraphs alone. For years they hoarded the words and the magic, growing stronger on it every day. But books are curious objects. They have the power to trap, transport, and even transform you if you are lucky. But in the end, books—even magic ones—are only objects pieced together from paper and glue and thread. That was the fundamental truth the readers forgot. How vulnerable the book really was.”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader



“Why in all the blue world would you sit here makin’ up stories when you could be out there makin’ stories?”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“Una pistola negra. Un colorido diente de león en la cubierta.
Y una explosión que astillaba las tablas del barco.
Y oscuridad.
Por unos momentos luchó como si pudiera apagar la visión con sus manos, agitando con las piernas, pero de repente le embargo una repentina e intensa paz. Se extendió por su interior al igual que la sangre avanza a través de la tela, saturando cada una de sus fibras.
Iba a morir, de acuerdo, pero ése no sería el día.
Y fue entonces cuando decidió que llevaría su barco al último confín occidental del mundo.
Porque aún había miles de aventuras por vivir, y apenas un numero finito de días para hacerlo.
Porque el mundo lo esperaba allí fuera.
¿Y porqué no?
Con ese último pensamiento, sonrió y cerró los ojos, dejó que el agua se lo llevara.”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“One was clutching the Book to his chest, under his crossed arms, as if trying to press it into his ribs, until his lungs filled with letters and his heart became a pulsing paragraph. The”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“Why didn’t your boy kill him?”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“—Es —leyó, sin deletrear— Un. Libro. Esto es un libro —miró hacía arriba impaciente—. Eso no es un libro. Es un pizarrón.
—¿Es lo que crees?
Lon abrió la boca para replicar, pero la cerró de nuevo al momento. Ladeó la cabeza, desconcertado. ¿Podía un pizarrón ser un libro? ¿Acaso cualquier cosa podía ser un libro, siempre y cuando uno supiera leerla?”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader



“She made each suture perfectly—one neat stitch after another—until they were lined up across Archer’s wounds like sharp black letters, as if every set of stitches was a healing word Doc had written to keep his skin together. There”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“Il punto non è aspettare che le cose vadano meglio," gli spiegava il padre. "Il punto è fare sempre del tuo meglio e credere fermamente di poter migliorare giorno dopo giorno.”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“In Kelanna, when they mourn, they tell stories—as if the stories will keep you close to them. Believing that if they tell them often enough, for long enough, you won’t be forgotten. Hoping that the stories will keep you alive—if only in memory. But”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“Ma far parte di una storia come quella? Una storia che oscurerebbe tutte le altre, con tutta la sua grandezza, tutta la sua importanza? Non mi darebbe certo più tempo, qui, ma se facessi parte di un evento del genere, forse la mia vita non sembrerebbe così piccola. Forse potrei fare qualcosa prima che finisca il mio tempo. Forse sarei importante.”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader


“Perchè diavolo vi sedete qui a inventarvi storie quando potreste essere lì fuori a crearle, queste storie?”
― Traci Chee, quote from The Reader



About the author

Popular quotes

“To want and not to have, sent all up her body a hardness, a hollowness, a strain. And then to want and not to have- to want and want- how that wrung the heart, and wrung it again and again!”
― Virginia Woolf, quote from To the Lighthouse


“I have done many impious things--no great ruler can do otherwise. I have put the good of the Empire before all human considerations. To keep the Empire free from factions I have had to commit many crimes.”
― Robert Graves, quote from I, Claudius


“Do we find happiness so often that we should turn it off the box when it happens to sit there?”
― E.M. Forster, quote from A Room with a View


“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
― George R.R. Martin, quote from A Dance with Dragons


“The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education. ”
― Maya Angelou, quote from I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings


Interesting books

Moxie
(6.1K)
Moxie
by Jennifer Mathieu
The Thief's Daughter
(11K)
The Thief's Daughter
by Jeff Wheeler
The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World
(14.2K)
The Book of Joy: Las...
by Dalai Lama XIV
Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own
(6.9K)
Spinster: Making a L...
by Kate Bolick
Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions
(3.2K)
Outrageous Acts and...
by Gloria Steinem
The Last Mile
(42.4K)
The Last Mile
by David Baldacci

About BookQuoters

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.