“How short a time a person had to be alive, he thought. How long to be dead.”
― Kate Grenville, quote from The Secret River
“it crossed Farren's mind that although death seemed big, life was even bigger”
― Kate Grenville, quote from The Secret River
“This place had been here long before him. It would go on sighing and breathing and being itself after he had gone, the land lapping on and on, watching, waiting, getting on with its own life.”
― Kate Grenville, quote from The Secret River
“Ain't nothing in this world just for the taking...A man got to pay a fair price for taking...Matter of give a little, take a little.”
― Kate Grenville, quote from The Secret River
“Soon I will die, he said, and then what everyone has been so afraid of for so long will have finally happened, and then everyone can rest.”
― Marie Howe, quote from What the Living Do: Poems
“Good writing is the hardest form of thinking. It involves the agony of turning profoundly difficult thoughts into lucid form, then forcing them into the tight-fitting uniform of language, making them visible and clear. If the writing is good, then the result seems effortless and inevitable. But when you want to say something life-changing or ineffable in a single sentence, you face both the limitations of the sentence itself and the extent of your own talent.”
― Pat Conroy, quote from My Reading Life
“on the Queen’s finger was that ring of gold with emeralds set therein, which Mark had given her on her bridal day; but her hand was so wasted that the ring hardly held.”
― quote from The Romance of Tristan
“Now the Night Bridge has seen you, too, and if you turned back, it could keep your soul forever.”
― Caitlin Kittredge, quote from The Iron Thorn
“If the screams of all earth's living creatures were one scream of pain, surely it would shake the stars.”
― P.D. James, quote from The Private Patient
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.