“My dad and I once had a fight because I refused to put ketchup on my hot dogs," I said.
"That's possibly the most American sentence I've ever heard.”
“A wave of intense happiness washed over me, and I told myself to carry this moment as a talisman of a time in my life when I was both truly content and lucky enough to realize it.”
“I hung up the phone and tapped it lightly against my chin, then wrapped myself tighter in my giant woolen cardigan and poured another glass of boxed wine — the official drink of emotionally confused women on a budget.”
“Well. You never have to be on with me. I promise," I said, kicking out my legs and lying down on the blanket. "You can do your crosswords and drink your heathen coffee and chill. You're not my sovereign.”
“There are plenty of people who like you just as you are. You should remember that when you start feeling like you're being erased.”
“Whatever this is… it doesn't happen twice in a lifetime. I'd rather work at this with you than settle for less with anyone else.”
“He has kind of a homicidal face. Or is that just syphilis making him insane? British monarchs do love their syphilis."
"A prerequisite of the job," he agreed.”
“Bex, please use this against me for the rest of our lives as an example of how I am about as clever as a shed.”
“I remember understanding what a brutal thing it is to be the bearer of truly bad news - to break off a piece of that misery and hand it to other people, one by one, and then have to comfort them; to put their grief on your shoulders on top of all your own; to be the calm one in the face of their shock and tears. And then learning that relative weight of grief is immaterial. Being smothered a little is no different than being smothered a lot. Either way, you can't breathe.”
“You look amazing."
"I look like a lunatic."
"A gorgeous lunatic."
"Don't bother me with your hormones. I'm reading.”
“No more apologies," he says. "I don't want you to think I'm holding something over you. I'm not. This isn't a favor. This is just love.”
“I felt a light whacking at my legs.
"Sturdy calves. She'll carry a child nicely," said Marta… "Sprog her up before I die, Nicky boy. I assume you know how.”
“A lady named Maude let me in the back,' he said. 'She's a firecracker, that one. Told me she's knitting trivets as a wild change of pace from scarves. If you're keeping score, that means changing from a rectangle all the way to a square.”
“I don’t know why it takes something monumentally destructive to remind you what you want to save.”
“One condition,” Cilla sniffled through a joyful smile. “We are not naming our child after any of your grandfather’s fonts.” “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Gaz said. “The only other one that crackpot invented was called the Serif of Nottingham.”
“You know, if I weren't getting married tomorrow, I would punch you," Nick says, flexing his left hand. "But Bex needs to be able to fit my ring on my finger.”
“During the ensuing seconds of silence, I must have burned a thousand calories just keeping my face impassive.”
“Besides, both sides of the same coin can’t be exactly alike.” She winked flirtatiously. “Otherwise no one would flip it.”
“I don't even know if I want to shag him."
Cilla rolled her eyes dramatically. "Of course you do," she said. "You can lie about your feelings all you want, but for God's sake, let's not lie about that.”
“You know what you said to me at the Abbey today?" he murmurs. "That you're mine for life?"
I nod, mutely.
"Thank you for that," he says. "Because I'm yours, too.”
“If the Palace doesn’t like my art, then I lose my work visa, and believe me, I do not want to go back to doing teen soaps in Wilmington.”
“Nick looked as surprised as if I'd just handed him my acceptance letter to Hogwarts.”
“Clivus interruptus that was developing every time Nick”
“Lose it for yourself, if you want to, not for anyone else.”
“I fell in love with a person, not a prince; the rest is just circumstance.”
“A woman can’t bloody well pick her signature drink without sampling the whole bar.”
“The Queen Mum did walk by, but she just poked me with her cane and told me a curtsy would have sufficed.”
“I remember once waiting for the Tube and thinking, as its oncoming headlights gleamed brighter in the tunnel, I could just jump. Not because I wanted to die, but because sometimes your mind dangles the worst-case behavior in front of you specifically so that you can be aware that you’re choosing to resist it.”
“relative weight of grief is immaterial. Being smothered a little is no different than being smothered a lot. Either way, you can’t breathe.”
“Hang on, you can’t punish a man for being in love,” Gaz shouted. “Love means nothing in tennis,” I said. “Literally, in fact.”
“What may I do to get back into your good graces?”
“You’ve done nothing to offend me.”
“Then why did you acknowledge Robart before me?”
What?
“You addressed him before you addressed me.”
I cleared my throat. “Just to be clear, you’re upset because I spoke to Robart before I spoke to you? In the ballroom just before we went to check on the car?”
“I understand that the circumstances of the summit prevent frank exchanges,” Arland said. “An appearance of propriety must be maintained and any hint of favoritism is to be avoided at all costs. But when one travels so far, one looks for the small things. A chance glance. A brief kindness, freely offered and gone unnoticed by all except its intended recipient. Some hint, some indication that he has not been forgotten. One might take an acknowledgment of a bitter rival before him, in public, as an indication of certain things.”
It dawned on me. His feelings were actually hurt.”
“Everything came and went, everything was new and bright with promise once and old and worn out later, and everything left a small, diminishing stain on eternity, a mark that time would eventually erase.”
“Your boys okay?”
“Tired, edgy, but giving it all they’ve got. One of ‘em has sworn to get Vau, another is having a love affair with a woman he shouldn’t even look at, I’m collecting waifs and strays like an animal shelter, and we nearly killed a treasury agent. But if I told you the really bad stuff, you’d think I have problems.”
“I might be a snob, but at least I’m not a hypocrite, still coasting around because I have nothing to do now that my life’s dream to fuck and breed for Che Guevara blew up in my face. Nor am I hanging out with rich people in West Kings House who now don’t wash their hair and calling themselves I-man to upset their parents, when everybody knows in two years they’re going right back to their father’s shipping company to take it over, and marry whichever Syrian bitch just win Miss Jamaica.”
“Caught early enough, the waking forest had no time to disguise itself into something mundane. This was a place of enchantments, a place where anything could happen.”
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.