Edward Kelsey Moore · 384 pages
Rating: (9.6K votes)
“Something Mama liked to say: “I love Jesus, but some of his representatives sure make my ass tired.”
― Edward Kelsey Moore, quote from The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat
“I was free to appreciate the quiet and the way the yellowish-gray light of the rising sun entered the room, turning everything from black and white to color. The journey from Kansas to Oz right in my own kitchen.”
― Edward Kelsey Moore, quote from The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat
“I called up to Mama, "Is this a miracle?" She raised and lowered her shoulders. Her voice drifted down, "Maybe. Or maybe this is just what's supposed to be.”
― Edward Kelsey Moore, quote from The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat
“Mama sneered at them. “I know you and Clarice are friends, but you can’t tell me you don’t wanna slap the livin’ shit outta that mother of hers. Talk about somebody with her head stuffed way up her own ass. And that sister of hers is just as bad. As far back as I can remember, Beatrice and Gory been usin’ Jesus as an excuse to be bitches.” She wagged her finger at them and, like they could hear her, said, “That’s right, I said it!”
― Edward Kelsey Moore, quote from The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat
“Later, Barbara Jean would remember looking at those eyes and thinking, This must be what the sky looks like if you see it through a diamond.”
― Edward Kelsey Moore, quote from The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat
“As far back as I can remember, Beatrice and Glory been usin’ Jesus as an excuse to be bitches.”
― Edward Kelsey Moore, quote from The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat
“I looked around for that welcoming light I'd heard about, but I didn't see it. Instead, everything around me seemed to glow and shimmer in the sunlight. I heard beautiful sounds-not the voices of dead loved ones, but the laughter and singing of my children when they were tiny. I saw James, young and shirtless, chasing them through Mama's garden. Off in the distance I saw Barbara Jean and Clarice, and even myself when we were kids, dancing to music pouring out of my old pink and violet portable record player. Here I was with my fingers brushing up against the frame of the picture I'd been painting for the last fifty-five years, and my beautiful, scarred husband, my happy children, and my laughing friends were right there with me.”
― Edward Kelsey Moore, quote from The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat
“Mama let out a snort. “Talk about a nerve. I guess she’s too good for my house now. She oughta try to sell that bullshit to some folks who don’t remember where she came from. And what kind of ‘working’ did she do to get outta Leanin’ Tree? All she did was outlive her lowlife daddy. Odette, tell her your mama’s back and that she’s fixin’ to haunt the fuck outta her. Go on, tell ‘er.”
― Edward Kelsey Moore, quote from The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat
“Our annual January get-together was a long-running tradition, going back to the first year of our marriage. The truth, even though he denies this, is that the first party was an attempt by James to prove to his friends that I wasn’t as bad a choice of a mate as I seemed. Richmond and Ramsey—and others, most likely—had warned James that a big-mouthed, hot-tempered woman like me could never be properly tamed. But James was determined to show them that I could, on occasion, be as domestic and wifely as any other woman. I suspect he’s still trying to convince them.”
― Edward Kelsey Moore, quote from The Supremes at Earl's All-You-Can-Eat
“In a real revolution, the best characters do not come to the front. A violent revolution falls into the hands of narrow-minded fanatics and of tyrannical hypocrites at first. Afterwards come the turn of all the pretentious intellectual failures of the time. Such are the chiefs and the leaders. You will notice that I have left out the mere rogues. The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane and devoted natures, the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement, but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims: the victims of disgust, disenchantment–often of remorse. Hopes grotesquely betrayed, ideals caricatured–that is the definition of revolutionary success.”
― Paul Johnson, quote from Modern Times: The World from the Twenties to the Nineties
“I suppose my greatest disappointment has been realizing my father, like Joseph and Brigham before him, tried to shroud his passions in the mantle of religion. He used God to defend his adultery. --- Ann Eliza Young, page 253”
― David Ebershoff, quote from The 19th Wife
“When the women went to the tomb they met someone else and in the half light they thought it was Jesus himself. Answer: they would have noticed soon enough.”
― N.T. Wright, quote from Surprised by Hope: Rethinking Heaven, the Resurrection, and the Mission of the Church
“From the first note I knew it was different from anything I had ever heard.... It began simply, but with an arresting phrase, so simple, but eloquent as a human voice. It spoke, beckoning gently as it unwound, rising and tensing. It spiraled upward, the tension growing with each repeat of the phrasing, and yet somehow it grew more abandoned, wilder with each note. His eyes remained closed as his fingers flew over the strings, spilling forth surely more notes than were possible from a single violin. For one mad moment I actually thought there were more of them, an entire orchestra of violins spilling out of this one instrument. I had never heard anything like it--it was poetry and seduction and light and shadow and every other contradiction I could think of. It seemed impossible to breathe while listening to that music, and yet all I was doing was breathing, quite heavily. The music itself had become as palpable a presence in that room as another person would have been--and its presence was something out of myth.”
― Deanna Raybourn, quote from Silent in the Grave
“It wasn't like Samantha, Leo thought, to meddle. Inside her booth, Madam Zarina offered advice and answers to troubled questions, but outside it Samantha minded her own business and scrupulously avoided the business of others. It had been a hard lesson learned, but she had learned it well. So what was she up to now?”
― Kay Hooper, quote from Hunting Fear
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.