“Possibility, infinity, beauty -- none of those words were right. [...] What he really wanted to say was: have you felt this? this phantom life streaking like a phosphorescent hound at the edges of your ruin? ”
― Haven Kimmel, quote from The Solace of Leaving Early
“...he said almost nothing, and ground his teeth against his desire to tell them the truth: God is helpless. We are at the mercy of our own radical freedom, and all God can do is take into God's self the grief, the violence, the sublime acts of kindness, the good sex. God comes to us from the future, and has only one godlike gift: the lure. We are lured toward truth, beauty, and goodness...the lure is pulling at our hearts like some lucid joy inside every actual occasion and all we have to do is...Say yes.”
― Haven Kimmel, quote from The Solace of Leaving Early
“But you can't ever live in the place you dream about, the town you long for. ...the moment you become conscious of your desire, and then fulfill it, it evaporates.”
― Haven Kimmel, quote from The Solace of Leaving Early
“He did know: he knew her right away, and he felt known by her, and that was where the trouble really began...She could have been exotic or worldly or a Valkyrie and it would have meant nothing to him. But that Alice saw him―that was a feeling Amos had never experienced before, and it felt like a revelation and also like a virus.”
― Haven Kimmel, quote from The Solace of Leaving Early
“The pigs were pushing their noses through the slats in the truck bed, which made Langston so unaccountably sad she thought she would have to sit down on the sidewalk. How is it possible, she thought, that a person can drive a thinking, feeling, animal to slaughter and not become less than an animal himself? And what were the pigs searching for, after all, but air and freedom?”
― Haven Kimmel, quote from The Solace of Leaving Early
“Six paradoxes of Mature Socialism: 1) There’s no unemployment, but no one works; 2) no one works, but productivity goes up; 3) productivity goes up, but stores are empty; 4) stores are empty, but fridges are full; 5) fridges are full, but no one is satisfied; 6) no one is satisfied, but everyone votes yes.”
― Anya von Bremzen, quote from Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing
“ما هكذا فعل قائدنا أبو ركوة (الوليد بن هشام بن المغيرة) قبل ألف عام. فلما رأى الناس يؤمنون بأن الحاكم بأمر الله يحكم بأمر الله، لم يسقط في يده، ولم ينتظر أن يصبح الشعب مؤهلاً، بل أقنعهم بأنه ثائر عليه هو أيضاً، بأمر الله. فتلقب بالثائر بأمر الله على الحاكم بأمر الله. فحيد العزة بالعزة. والحاكم أظلم. فتبعه خلق كثير.”
― quote from The Secret Life of Saeed: The Pessoptimist
“We may not be able to witness our own eulogy, but we’re actually writing it all the time, every day.”
― Arianna Huffington, quote from Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder
“You’re not fighting for abstractions. No one does. Humans pay lip service to that, to big causes and great purposes, but any politician of any skill soon learns that what really motivates people is the small, personal things. Close friends, family, the small area they call home. They wrap those things around ideals and call them precious, but they’re precious for the smallest and closest of reasons. Soldiers may swear to fight for their flag, but they really fight because of the soldiers next to them.”
― Jack Campbell, quote from Valiant
“She’d just spent the last hours engaged in endless small talk. Now, when it mattered so much, she seemed to have no words to say, or even breath to speak them with. All her life she’d always had such trouble with words: finding them and losing them, hoarding them and wasting them.”
― Penelope Williamson, quote from The Passions of Emma
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.