“Can you define "plan" as "a loose sequence of manifestly inadequate observations and conjectures, held together by panic, indecision, and ignorance"? If so, it was a very good plan.”
“Besides, if you're going to die horribly, you might as well do it with style.”
“Then again, Solomon was human. And that meant he was flawed (Go on, take a look at yourself in the mirror. A good long look, if you can bear it. See? Flawed's putting it mildly, isn't it?)”
“Hippo in a skirt: this was a comic reference to one of Solomon's principal wives, the one from Moab. Childish? Yes. But in the days before printing we had limited opportunities for satire.”
“Not bad in short, though the last one [understanding the language of animals], isn't half as useful as you might expect, since when all's said and done the language of the beasts tends to revolve around: a) the endless hunt for food, b) finding a warm bush to sleep in the evening, and c) the sporadic satisfication of certain glands. (Many would argue that the language of human kind boils down to this too)”
“It's the same with spirit guises; show me a sweet little choirboy or a smiling mother and I'll show you the hideous fanged strigoi it really is. (Not always. Just sometimes. *Your* mother is absolutely fine, for instance. Probably.)”
“In recent weeks it has come to my attention that many caravans have met with disaster; they have not gotten through."
I grunted wisely. "Probably ran out of water. That's the thing about deserts. Dry."
"Indeed. A fascinating analysis. But survivors reaching Hebron report differently: monsters fell upon them in the wastes."
"What, fell upon them in a squashed-them kind of way?"
"More the leaped-out-and-slew-them kind. (...)”
“Her clarity gave her purpose and her purpose gave her clarity.”
“Me, I was still in the pygmy hippo in a skirt, singing lusty songs about Solomon's private life and a giant stone back and forth through the air as I climbed out of the quarry at the edge of the site.”
“Zealots: Wild eyed persons afflicted with incurable certainty about the workings of the world, a certainty that can lead to violence when the world doesn't fit.”
“The Evasive Cartwheel ™ © etc., Bartimaeus of Uruk, circa. 2800 B.C.E. Often imitated, never surpassed. As famously memorialized in the New Kingdom tomb paintings of Ramses III— you can just see me in the background of The Dedication of the Royal Family before Ra, wheeling out of sight behind the pharaoh.”
“En pleine bagarre, vous vous en tenez au strict nécessaire, à savoir étriper l’adversaire en faisant en sorte que ce dernier ne vous arrache pas les bras pour vous assommer avec.”
“Ich für meinen Teil denke während einer Verfolgungsjagd gern nach. Keiner stört einen, man ist allein und all die Problemchen werden bedeutungslos. Das wichtigste Thema heißt natürlich: "Wie bleibe ich am Leben?", aber auch andere Dinge sieht man in neuem Licht, was zu ganz neuen und manchmal überraschenden Erkenntnissen führt.”
“Wenn man schon eines grässlichen Todes sterben muss, sollte man wenigstens einen stilvollen Abgang hinlegen.”
“The group’s executive director, Michael Jacobson, was trained as a microbiologist at MIT, and a few years after the group started up, Jacobson’s interest in salt was ignited. He had just finished a project examining the preservatives, colorings, and chemical processing aids being used by food companies in making their products. As scary as some of these might have seemed, he spotted the far more tangible and pressing target of salt. He saw how the country’s rates”
“The first time I walked into the room and saw Naya asleep on Lucas's chest while he slept, too, his hand over her naked baby butt..." Sascha sighed, rubbing a fist over her heart. "I don't think I've recovered.”
“Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know. And so far will I trust thee,”
“يمكن أن أموت غدًا، وأن لا يبقى أحد على وجه الأرض قد فهمني تماما. سيعتبرني بعضهم أسوأ مما أنا، وسيعتبرني البعض الآخر أفضل. سيقول بعضهم إننى كنت شخصًا طيبًا، وسيقول آخرون أنني كنت وغدًا، ولكن كلا الرأيين سيكونان خاطئين.”
“Forget Ryan,' Heidi said dismissively. 'He's a tool.'
'I thought you liked him!'
'I did--until I saw how little convincing he needed from me to cheat on you. And then I realized, Ryan Dano is a tool.”
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.