“Clearly the secret of happiness...is a variation on the general principle of banging your head against a wall, and then stopping.”
― Stef Penney, quote from The Tenderness of Wolves
“...it just goes to show you can't leave anything behind. You bring it all with you, whether you want to or not.”
― Stef Penney, quote from The Tenderness of Wolves
“I despise this weakness in myself--this endless one-sided conversation that takes the place of action...”
― Stef Penney, quote from The Tenderness of Wolves
“He thought of the next Saturday. [...] He thought of the picnic by the dipping pool on the river, where oaks and willows dappled the sun on water the color of tea; and girls in light summer dresses would sit in pools of pale cotton.
And he knew he would not go.”
― Stef Penney, quote from The Tenderness of Wolves
“He smiled to show he meant no offense, but Scott takes offense like it is going out of style, and bristled.”
― Stef Penney, quote from The Tenderness of Wolves
“Le resulta agotador estar en compañía de personas para las que una sonrisa espontánia es señal de infantil debilidad.”
― Stef Penney, quote from The Tenderness of Wolves
“Looking to the mountains around us, I saw that the mysterious artist who comes at night had paid us a visit. I wondered how he could paint so many different colors in one night; red, wine, yellow, and rust.”
― Wilson Rawls, quote from Where the Red Fern Grows
“Wang Lung sat smoking, thinking of the silver as it had lain upon the table. It had come out of the earth, this silver, out of the earth that he ploughed and turned and spent himself upon. He took his life from the earth; drop by drop by his sweat he wrung food from it and from the food, silver. Each time before this that he had taken the silver out to give to anyone, it had been like taking a piece of his life and giving it to someone carelessly. But not for the first time, such giving was not pain. He saw, not the silver in the alien hand of a merchant in the town; he saw the silver transmuted into something worth even more than life itself - clothes upon the body of his son.”
― Pearl S. Buck, quote from The Good Earth
“This hobble of being alive is rather serious, don’t you think so?”
― Thomas Hardy, quote from Tess of the D'Urbervilles
“We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered.”
― Kahlil Gibran, quote from The Prophet
“Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind,
And therefore is winged Cupid painted blind.”
― William Shakespeare, quote from A Midsummer Night's Dream
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.