“If you're going to live, you might as well do painful, brave, and beautiful things.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“Nothing makes you feel more naked than someone identifying a desire you never knew you possessed.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“Writing is something that you can learn only by doing. To become a writer, you need an imagination, which you clearly have. You need to read books, which you clearly do. And you need to write, which you don't yet do, but should.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“That wouldn't be a bad way to die...giving off light for millions of years after you're gone.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“I've made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“She's it. She's my everything. She's the standard by which I'll judge beauty for the rest of my life. I'll measure every touch to her breath on my skin. Every voice to her voice. Every mind to her mind. My measure of perfection. The name carved into me. If I could, I would lie with her under these stars until my heart burst.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“So when I watch trains, it makes me think about how much movement there is in the world. How every train has dozens of cars and every car has hundreds of parts, and all those parts and cars work day after day. And then there are all these other motions. People are born and die. Seasons change. Rivers flow to the sea. Earth circles the sun and the moon circles Earth. Everything whirring and spinning toward something. And I get to be part of it for a little while, the way I get to watch a train for a minute or two, and then it's gone.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“I want you to be careful in this world. My heart is wrapped up in you.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“What you call pride, I call courage.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“We live in a series of moments and seasons and sense memories, strung end to end to form a sort of story.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“How is it every time we're talking about the real world, you manage to bring up fantasy, and every time we're talking about fantasy, you manage to bring up the real world?
Travis shrugged. "My fantasies are more interesting than the real world and machines and tools are more interesting than you guys' fantasies.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“You're never safe from yourself. Your own blood will poison you.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“I’m tired of watching children perish. I’m tired of watching the world grind up gentle people. I’m tired of outliving those I shouldn’t be outliving. I’ve made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery. I needed to say that out loud to somebody other than my cats. Please take care of yourselves, my young friends.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“The worst days spent with her were better than the best days spent without her.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“Wanting to believe something is powerful”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“People live quiet lives and that's okay. There's dignity in that, no matter what you may think.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“Some fall in glorious ways. One green fields of battle as old warriors, surrounded by friends, fighting for their homes, fighting cruelty.
Some fall crawling in the dirt of Forrestville, Tennessee, in the dark, impossibly young and alone, for no good reason at all.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“There are books stacked high around them - the way opportunity and possibility are stacked around them.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“music was the only beautiful thing he owned”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“Because we should do things we're afraid of. It makes it easier every time we do it.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“She got up , walked around the table, and gave him a lingering hug, running her fingers through the back of his hair. She'd been finding more excuses to hug him lately.
"What was that for?" Dill asked.
"Because you looked like your heart stepped on a Lego.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“Love deserves monuments, and this is the only kind I know how to build.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“We are a fallen species, spitting on the gift of salvation. Humanity is irredeemable.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“Some fall in glorious ways. On green fields of battle as old warriors, surrounded by friends, fighting for their homes, fighting cruelty.
Some fall crawling in the dirt of Forrestville, Tennessee, in the dark, impossibly young and alone, for no good reason at all.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“And if you’re going to live, you might as well do painful, brave, and beautiful things.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“Knight, proud in victory, proud in death. Let your name evermore be a light to those who loved you. Let white flowers grow upon this place that you rest. Yours was a life well lived, and now you dine in the halls of the Elders at their eternal feast.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“You're telling someone in a wheelchair 'Walking is awesome. You should get up and walk.' It's not that easy.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
“Do you guys not get it? You can’t hurt us anymore. You can’t do anything to us. You can’t take anything from us. You’re nothing now.”
― Jeff Zentner, quote from The Serpent King
Jeff Zentner
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“It's a little like being alone on a moving train for the first time. The excitement and wonder at the new experience slowly gives way to the creeping feeling that something isn't quite right. You check your ticket and see that you have made a mistake-- it's not the train that you have intended to be on. At first, you try and deny it. You watch the scenery slipping past and try to find a familiar landmark, and for awhile you take solace in denial.
But soon, the terrifyingly unfamiliar terrain outside the window causes you to panic. Crushing fear that you can't ignore makes you rush around, looking for a way off it. But, it's moving too fast that you know there is no getting off until it stops somewhere. So you creep back to your seat and try not to attract any attention to yourself because the strangers in the train have taken on a weird, plastic appearance. Any camaraderie that you may have shared with them before is gone since you're no longer one of them: you're a trespasser meant to be on a different train.
The knowledge begins to weigh on you as you slide farther and farther from where you wanted to go. You try to reign in on your fear and convince yourself that maybe this new destination will be better than the one you had planned for yourself.
Then, somewhere along the way you discover that all your baggage is wrong, too, and you find that you're ill equipped to survive on the trip you're on, but then... then you notice that the stranger sitting next to you isn't like the other passengers... that even though you sat in his seat, he is going to try and help you sort out the tangle you're in. And, because this stranger is so perfect, you begin to relax a little and forget that you are on the wrong train at all.”
― Amy A. Bartol, quote from Incendiary
“Do you love me?”
Without hesitation, he answers, “More than anything in my life.”
― Belle Aurora, quote from Willing Captive
“That type of dream just kind of wears out with time like a favorite old T-shirt. One day, it's nothing but tatters and all you can do is throw it over on the rag pile with the others.”
― Tim Tharp, quote from The Spectacular Now
“I'll run one day. Run for my life. To be free and think for myself...I'll run to be emancipated.”
― Melina Marchetta, quote from Looking for Alibrandi
“There's something to that in both directions," said Ekaterin mildly. "Nothing is more guaranteed to make one start acting like a child than to be treated like one. It's so infuriating. It took me the longest time to figure out how to stop falling into that trap."
"Yes, exactly," said Kareen eagerly. "You understand! So—how did you make them stop?"
"You can't make them—whoever your particular them is—do anything, really," said Ekaterin slowly. "Adulthood isn't an award they'll give you for being a good child. You can waste . . . years, trying to get someone to give that respect to you, as though it were a sort of promotion or raise in pay. If only you do enough, if only you are good enough. No. You have to just . . . take it. Give it to yourself, I suppose. Say, I'm sorry you feel like that, and walk away. But that's hard.”
― Lois McMaster Bujold, quote from A Civil Campaign
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The Vengekeep Prophe...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.
