“Among the many fox magics her sobo had delighted in describing, the one that had most captured her imagination was the power to alter form. The most eldritch among foxes could turn (or so her grandmother would claim in that musical croak that was her storytelling voice) into human beings. The they would creep into the lives of lonely and impressionable souls and offer them long-sought affection.”
― Ali Shaw, quote from The Trees
“...it's survival of the fittest, not the strongest or the biggest.”
― Ali Shaw, quote from The Trees
“The proposal thus surmounted, it had seemed to him that the hard work was over, and that all that remained was to live out their lives in wedded bliss.”
― Ali Shaw, quote from The Trees
“Sometimes, just when she thought Seb was made out of wires and circuit boards, he came up with ideas so romantic that she wanted to throw her arms around him and bury a kiss in his hair. Were he only her little boy again, the one he had been not so many years ago, she would have done so there and then.”
― Ali Shaw, quote from The Trees
“You can’t wait for the world to be perfect before you start living in it.”
― Ali Shaw, quote from The Trees
“Wherefore it would appear that this number was thus allied unto her for the purpose of signifying that, at her birth, all these nine heavens were at perfect unity with each other as to their influence. This is one reason that may be brought: but more narrowly considering, and according to the infallible truth, this number was her own self: that is to say, by similitude. As thus. The number three is the root of the number nine; seeing that without the interposition of any other number, being multiplied merely by itself, it produceth nine, as we manifestly perceive that three times three are nine. Thus, three being of itself the efficient of nine, and the Great Efficient of Miracles being of Himself Three Persons (to wit: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit), which, being Three, are also One:—this lady was accompanied by the number nine to the end that men might clearly perceive her to be a nine, that is, a miracle, whose only root is the Holy Trinity. It may be that a more subtile person would find for this thing a reason of greater subtilty: but such is the reason that I find, and that liketh me best.”
― Dante Alighieri, quote from Vita Nuova
“What is it they want from a man that they didn't get from his work? What do they expect? What is there left of him when he's done his work? What's any artist, but the dregs of his work? the human shambles that follows it around. What's left of the man when the work's done but a shambles of apology.”
― William Gaddis, quote from The Recognitions
“But above and beyond there's still one name left over,
And that is the name that you never will guess;
The name that no human research can discover--
But the cat himself knows, and will never confess.
When you notice a cat in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, is always the same:
His mind is engaged in a rapt contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of his name:
His ineffable effable
Effanineffable
Deep and inscrutable singular Name.”
― T.S. Eliot, quote from Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats
“It was like looking for a needle in a haystack full of vipers.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Murphy
“I don’t think so, dude. Gabriel would kill me. And then Scarlet would kill me. And they could just keep on killing me over and over again because I don’t ever die. Do you know how much that would suck?”
― Chelsea Fine, quote from Anew
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.
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