“Books can be possessive, can't they? You're walking around in a bookstore and a certain one will jump out at you, like it had moved there on its own, just to get your attention. Sometimes what's inside will change your life, but sometimes you don't even have to read it. Sometimes it's a comfort just to have a book around. Many of these books haven't even had their spines cracked. 'Why do you buy books you don't even read?' our daughter asks us. That's like asking someone who lives alone why they bought a cat. For company, of course.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Sometimes you weren't supposed to share pain. Sometimes it was best just to deal with it alone.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“I think Heaven will be like a first kiss.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Like magic, she felt him getting nearer, felt it like a pull in the pit of her stomach. It felt like hunger but deeper, heavier. Like the best kind of expectation. Ice cream expectation. Chocolate expectation.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Snow flurries began to fall and they swirled around people's legs like house cats. It was magical, this snow globe world.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“It was the best first kiss in the history of first kisses. It was as sweet as sugar. And it was warm, as warm as pie. The whole world opened up and I fell inside. I don't know where I was, but I didn't care. I didn't care because the only person who mattered was there with me.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“She accepted it from then on. Books liked her. Books wanted to look after her.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Girls like us, when we love, it takes everything we have.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“It feels like he's taken your heart, doesn't it?....Like he's reached in and pulled it out from you. And I bet he smiles like he doesn't know, like he doesn't know he's holding your heart in his hand and you're dying from him.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Safe is just another word for scared.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“He was the only person in the world she was tongue-tied around, and yet the only person she really wanted to talk to.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“To this day she could make tap water boil just by kissing him.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“She went to the window. A fine sheen of sugary frost covered everything in sight, and white smoke rose from chimneys in the valley below the resort town. The window opened to a rush of sharp early November air that would have the town in a flurry of activity, anticipating the tourists the colder weather always brought to the high mountains of North Carolina.
She stuck her head out and took a deep breath. If she could eat the cold air, she would. She thought cold snaps were like cookies, like gingersnaps. In her mind they were made with white chocolate chunks and had a cool, brittle vanilla frosting. They melted like snow in her mouth, turning creamy and warm.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“When Josey woke up and saw the feathery frost on her windowpane, she smiled. Finally, it was cold enough to wear long coats and tights. It was cold enough for scarves and shirts worn in layers, like camouflage. It was cold enough for her lucky red cardigan, which she swore had a power of its own. She loved this time of year. Summer was tedious with the light dresses she pretended to be comfortable in while secretly sure she looked like a loaf of white bread wearing a belt. The cold was such a relief.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“She'd always known he didn't love her. But it was easier to bear when he didn't know she loved him. That way they were even. Now he knew he had all the power.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Books liked her. Books wanted to look after her.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“She'd fallen into the best part of her past.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Embarrassment felt a lot like eating chili peppers. It burned in the back of your throat and there was nothing you could do to make it go away. You just had to take it, suffer from it, until it eased off.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Not every man was sorry when he hurt a woman.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“He used to believe good things happened in this kind of weather.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“He had a smug smile on his lips like he knew, even in his sleep, that women all around him were dying from love because he'd taken their hearts and hidden them where they'd never find them.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“The area was encompassed in a bubble of warm, fragrant steam from the funnel cake deep fryers. It smelled like sweet vanilla cake batter you licked off a spoon.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“There was a certain power beautiful mothers held over their less beautiful daughters.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“You're dying with the way things are," Della Lee said harshly, causing Josey to lower the handful of popcorn she was about to put in her mouth. "You're going to lose yourself in this, Josey. It's going to happen if you don't change. I know. I lost myself trying to find happiness in things that didn't love me back.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Even at seventy-four, with a limp from a hip replacement, Margaret could still enter a room and fill it like perfume.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Ice queens didn't break, after all. They melted. And Marco didn't have enough warmth for that.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“So you stay, you don't tell anyone, is that it?"
"Sure," Della Lee said easily.
"That's blackmail."
"Add it to my list of sins."
"I don't think there's room left on that list," Josey said as she took a dress from its hanger. Then she closed the closet door on Della Lee.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“He fell in love with a skinny stray cat that would skulk around the dining hall during meals. Every day, Jake would offer it sausage or egg from breakfast and pepperoni or hamburger from lunch. Every day, it ran away from him. But Jake didn’t give up. Even when he had the stomach flu, he snuck out of the infirmary to try to feed it. He was not going to let it down. He would watch it from classroom windows. He even made up a poem about it that he sent home to his mother in a letter. Three months later, the little cat was finally hungry enough to trust him. It never occurred to Jake that the cat...”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“Josey?” She heard her mother’s voice in the hall, then the thud of her cane as she came closer. “Please don’t tell her I’m here,” the woman in the closet said, with a strange sort of desperation. Despite the cold outside, she was wearing a cropped white shirt and tight dark blue jeans that sat low, revealing a tattoo of a broken heart on her hip. Her hair was bleached white-blond with about an inch of silver-sprinkled dark roots showing. Her mascara had run and there were black streaks on her cheeks. She looked drip-dried, like she’d been walking in the rain, though there hadn’t...”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
“And you couldn't make a snowman in your neighborhood because?
Because you weren't there.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, quote from The Sugar Queen
Sarah Addison Allen
Born place: in North Carolina, The United States
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“For every person who died in the westward migration prior to the Civil War from Native Americans attacking, the stuff of American legends, thousands, maybe tens of thousands died from water holes polluted by cholera and typhoid . . . but that doesn’t make for a good movie.”
― William R. Forstchen, quote from One Second After
“I suppose that now you'll want to sleep with me?Alas big guy I'm taken.'
'No. you're not,'Regin said.
'Am too,' Nix said. 'Mike Rowe, the star of Dirty Jobs, is soon to realize I'm his beloved.' She sighed dreamily. 'He even got his lawyers to contact me on the pretext of a' she made air quotes 'restraining order.”
― Kresley Cole, quote from Dark Needs at Night's Edge
“You can Laugh or you can cry, it changes nothing”
― Alexandra Ivy, quote from When Darkness Comes
“We live in hope that the good we do here on earth will be rewarded in heaven. We also hope to win the war. We hope that right and goodness will triumph, and that when the war is won, we shall have a better world. And we work toward that end. We buy war bonds and put out incendiaries and knit stockings---"
And pumpkin-colored scarves, Polly thought.
"---and volunteer to take in evacuated children and work in hospitals and drive ambulances" - here Alf grinned and nudged Eileen sharply in the ribs - "and man anti-aircraft guns. We join the Home Guard and the ATS and the Civil Defence, but we cannot know whether the scrap metal we collect, the letter we write to a solider, the vegetables we grow, will turn out in the end to have helped win the war or not. We act in faith.
"But the vital thing is that we act. We do not rely on hope alone, thought hope is our bulwark, our light through dark days and darker nights. We also work, and fight, and endure, and it does not matter whether the part we play is large or small. The reason that God marks the fall of the sparrow is that he knows that it is as important to the world as the bulldog or the wolf. We all, all must do 'our bit'. For it is through our deeds that the war will be won, through our kindness and devotion and courage that we make that better world for which we long.”
― Connie Willis, quote from All Clear
“Sometimes you just have to do things, Quentin,” Julia said, as he climbed on board after her. “You spend too much of your time waiting.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician King
Aesop's Fables
The Forever War
North and South
About a Boy
Freedom
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.
