Quotes from The Time of Our Singing

“In that weekly ecstatic keeping of faith and bearing of witness, Delia fell in love with singing. Singing was something that might make sense of a person. Singing might make more sense of life than living had to start with.”
― Richard Powers, quote from The Time of Our Singing

“The use of music is to remind us how short a time we have a body.”
― Richard Powers, quote from The Time of Our Singing

“Written music is like nothing in the world—an index of time. The idea is so bizarre, it’s almost miraculous: fixed instructions on how to recreate the simultaneous. How to be a flow, both motion and instant, both stream and cross section.”
― Richard Powers, quote from The Time of Our Singing

“The world is vicious, too huge to care about even its own survival”
― Richard Powers, quote from The Time of Our Singing

“Silence: the motor drive of nothingness underneath all rhythm - threatened to last forever, a spell of sleep cast over the entire kingdom of listeners.”
― Richard Powers, quote from The Time of Our Singing

“All the while moving the idea of home three more modulations deeper into unspinning space”
― Richard Powers, quote from The Time of Our Singing

“But memory will forever replay this day in black and white, the slow voice-over pan of Movietone”
― Richard Powers, quote from The Time of Our Singing

“Our father knew more than any living person about the secret of time, except how to live in it. His time did not travel; it was a block of persisting nows.”
― Richard Powers, quote from The Time of Our Singing

“He stayed inside his perfect silence, hung on the stopped, forward edge of nowhere”
― Richard Powers, quote from The Time of Our Singing

“If the past is older than the present, then the future must be younger. And we must all go backward with each passing year.”
― Richard Powers, quote from The Time of Our Singing

“Feeling for the first time what it meant to kick open doors that kept closing, no matter how many legends had already passed through.”
― Richard Powers, quote from The Time of Our Singing

“We'd drifted too far to rely on the old boyhood telepathy anymore.”
― Richard Powers, quote from The Time of Our Singing

“Maybe they're not scared of different. Maybe they're scared of same. If we turn out to be too much like them, who can they be?”
― Richard Powers, quote from The Time of Our Singing

“A cracker kid in a designated white house in a black neighborhood off in fly- bitten Mississippi was about to let loose the secret beat of race music, forever blowing away the enriched-flour, box stepping public.”
― Richard Powers, quote from The Time of Our Singing

“What we want, finally, from friends, is that they have no more clue than we do.”
― Richard Powers, quote from The Time of Our Singing

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Popular quotes

“If the work of our sanctification presents, apparently, the most insurmountable difficulties, it is because we do not know how to form a just idea of it. In reality sanctity can be reduced to one single practice, fidelity to the duties appointed by God. Now this fidelity is equally within each one's power whether in its active practice, or passive exercise. The active practice of fidelity consists in accomplishing the duties which devolve upon us whether imposed by the general laws of God and of the Church, or by the particular state that we may have embraced. Its passive exercise consists in the loving acceptance of all that God sends us at each moment.”
― quote from Abandonment to Divine Providence: The Classic Text with a Spiritual Commentary

“Please tell a story about a girl who gets away.”
I would, even if I had to adapt one, even if I had to make one up just for her. “Gets away from what, though?”
“From her fairy godmother. From the happy ending that isn’t really happy at all. Please have her get out and run off the page altogether, to somewhere secret where words like ‘happy’ and ‘good’ will never find her.”
“You don’t want her to be happy and good?”
“I’m not sure what’s really meant by happy and good. I would like her to be free. Now. Please begin.”
― Helen Oyeyemi, quote from White is for Witching

“Susie . . . ” With his hands on her face, he found her eyes. “If you make love with me and then go back to him, you’ll ruin me".”
― Marie Force, quote from Line of Scrimmage

“In all of our experiences together, there always was that moment that I could have turned back and I never ever did. Even if it scared me to the core, to the very soul and fiber of my being, I still went forward into the unknown. Some may call that brave. I don't think I'd call it that. Stubborn beyond repair seemed more fitting.”
― Karina Halle, quote from Dead Sky Morning

“Who ever loved that loved not at first sight?" wrote Marlowe, the man Shakespeare feared for many years was the better writer, the man who with those words issued a license to misery to millions of underexperienced teenagers and thousands of overeducated middle-aged jackasses.”
― Arthur Phillips, quote from The Tragedy of Arthur

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About BookQuoters

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.