Quotes from The Traveler

“Life is dangerous. That's what makes it interesting.”
― John Twelve Hawks, quote from The Traveler

“Every new experience is unusual. The rest of life is just sleep and committee meetings.”
― John Twelve Hawks, quote from The Traveler

“Human beings have an almost unlimited capacity for self-delusion. We can justify any amount of sadness if it fits our own particular standard of reality. ”
― John Twelve Hawks, quote from The Traveler

“I spent my time drinking and staring at a television in the airport bar. More death and destruction. Crime. Pollution. All the news stories were telling me to be frightened. All the commercials were telling me to buy things I didn´t need. The message was that people could only be passive victims or consumers.”
― John Twelve Hawks, quote from The Traveler

“You don´t need to watch everyone if everyone believes they're beeing watched. (...) Punishment isn't necessary, but the inevitability of punishment has to be programmed into the brain.”
― John Twelve Hawks, quote from The Traveler

“No one seems to realize how immense consciousness really is. It ties us to the rest of the universe.”
― John Twelve Hawks, quote from The Traveler

About the author

Popular quotes

“If you want to really hurt you parents, and you don't have the nerve to be gay, the least you can do is go into the arts. I'm not kidding. The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven's sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possible can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from A Man Without a Country

“You have to do what your heart dictates," Vivian says.
"Do you believe that?"
"Not sure, actually. It's always annoyingly inconvenient, isn't it, the thing about the heart?”
― Anita Shreve, quote from Sea Glass

“A crude way to put the whole thing is that our presence culture is, both develeopmentally and historically, adolescent. And since adolescence is acknowledged to be the single most stressful and frightening period of human development – the stage when adulthood we claim to crave begins to present itself as a real and narrowing system of responsibilities and limitation (taxes, death) and when we yearn inside for a return to the same childish oblivion we pretend to scorn – it’s not difficult to see why we as a culture are so susceptible to art and entertainment whose primary function is escape, i. e. fantasy, adrenaline, spectacle, romance, etc.”
― David Foster Wallace, quote from Consider the Lobster and Other Essays

“Involuntarily, she stopped, jerked up her head, looked around her like a frightened woman. They weren’t car horns: they were wind instruments”
― Stephen R. Donaldson, quote from The Mirror of Her Dreams

“حين يصل الكاتب عادة إلى الصفحة الأخيرة، تكون أغلى أمنية لديه أن يقرأ الناس كتابه بعد مائة أو مائتي عام. وبالطبع، لا يمكن التكهن بذلك، فهناك كتب أراد لها مؤلفوها الخلود ثم انطفأت غداة صدورها، في حين أن كتاباً قد يبقى، وكنا نخاله مجرد ترفيه لتلامذة المدراس. غير أن الأمل لا يفارقنا. أما هذا الكتاب الذي ليس ترفيهاً ولا عملاً أدبياً، فسوف أتمنى بشأنه عكس ذلك، أن يكتشفه حفيدي يوماً، وقد أصبح راشداً، مصادفةً في مكتبة العائلة، فيتصفحه ويقرأ بعض صفحاته، ثم يعيده فوراً إلى الرف المغطى بالغبار حيث تناوله، مستخفاً ومندهشاً للحاجة إلى قول هذه الأمور في الزمن الذي عاش فيه جده..”
― Amin Maalouf, quote from In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong

Interesting books

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.