Quotes from The Twelve

“As long as we remember a person, they're not really gone. Their thoughts, their feelings, their memories, they become a part of us.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“Because that's what heaven is...it's opening the door of a house in twilight and everyone you love is there.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“There was something in the pages of these books that had the power to make him feel better about things, a life raft to cling to before the dark currents of memory washed him downstream again, and on brighter days, he could even see himself going on this way for some time. A small but passable life.

And then, of course, the end of the world happened.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“That was always the hardest part, missing you.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“Sorry, we made vampires; it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“Never a good sign, he thought, when the crows showed up.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“He still had the young person’s predisposition to regard the world as a series of vaguely irritating problems created by people less cool and smart than he was.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“Kittredge had obviously misjudged her, but he had learned that was the way with most people. The story was never the story, and it surprised you, how much another person could carry.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“Even on the darkest night, my friend, life will have its way.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“Does anybody out there care? Are we worth saving? What would God want from me, if there is a God? The greatest faith is the willingness to ask in the first place, all evidence to the contrary. Faith not just in God, but in all of us.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“The military was all about hierarchies, who urinated highest on the hydrant”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“That's the worst part, really, when you think about it. Try as you might, nobody will ever truly know who you are. You're just somebody alone in a house with your thoughts and nothing else.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“I could have held his hand.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“The progress of her aging seemed to occur in fits and starts, not so much a matter of physical growth as a deepening self-possession, as if she were coming into ownership of her life.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“Michael lifted a menu from a stack on the counter and opened it. 'What's meatloaf?' I get the meat part, but a loaf of it?”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“How stark everything became, at the end, all the wishes for one's children distilled by the world's swift cruelty into the desperate hope that death would take them fast.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“How strange it was..., one minute you were all alone with your thoughts, the next somebody came along who seemed to know the deepest part of you, who could open you like a book.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“Strange how one minute life was a certain way and then it was another, and you couldn't remember what you'd done to make it all happen.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“The big man shrugged, "I don't know. You're pretty good with the cards. Tell me what the odds are."

[She] shifted her gaze to Michael, then back at Hollis. "This isn't a question of odds. Of all the men in the world, that woman chose you. If she's still out there, she's waiting for you. Staying alive any way she can until you find her. That's all that matters."

Everybody waited for what Hollis would next say. "You're a real ball-buster, you know that? ...Let me pack a few things.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“For you, hunting the Twelve isn't an answer. It's a question. Does anybody out there care? Are we worth saving? What would God want from me, if there is a God? The greatest faith is the willingness to ask in the first place, all evidence to the contrary. Faith not just in God, but in all of us.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“His father had always said, Son, the most important thing in life is to make a contribution. Who would have thought Kittridge’s contribution would be video-blogging from the front lines of the apocalypse?”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“But I did what I thought was right in the moment. In the end, that’s all a man has to measure his life, and it’s plenty.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“She would be a girl; Lila had seen her on the ultrasound. A baby girl. Tiny hands and tiny feet and a tiny heart and lungs, floating in the warm broth of her body.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“His gaze widened, then taking in the entirety of the camp. All these people: they were trapped. And not merely by the wires that surrounded them. Physical barricades were nothing compared to the wires of the mind. What had truly imprisoned them was one another. Husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and companions: what they believed had given them strength in their lives had actually done the opposite. Guilder recalled the couple who lived across the street from his townhouse, trading off their sleeping daughter on the way to the car. How heavy that burden must have felt in their arms. And when the end swept down upon them all, they would exit the world on a wave of suffering, their agonies magnified a million times over by the loss of her. Would they have to watch her die? Would they perish first, knowing what would become of her in their absence? Which was preferable? But the answer was neither. Love had sealed their doom. Which was what love did.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“It was a debt that Peter could never fully repay: the debt of borrowed courage.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“Events can seem random while you’re living them, but when you look back, what do you see? A chain of coincidences? Plain old luck? Or something more? I’ll tell you what I see, Peter. A clear path. More than that. A true path.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

“The story was never the story, and it surprised you, how much another person could carry.”
― Justin Cronin, quote from The Twelve

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Popular quotes

“Granma said everybody has two minds. One of the minds has to do with the necessaries for body living. You had to use it to figure out how to get shelter and eating and such like for the body... She said we had to have that mind so as we could carry on. But she said we had another mind that had nothing atall to do with such. She said it was the spirit mind.

Granma said if you used the body-living mind to think greedy or mean; if you was always cuttin' at folks with it and figuring how to material profit off'n them ... then you would shrink up your spirit mind to a size no bigger 'n a hickor'nut.

Granma said that when your body died, the body-living mind died with it, and if that's the way you had thought all your life there you was, stuck with a hickor'nut spirit, as the spirit mind was all that lived when everything else died...

Granma said that the spirit mind was like any other muscle. If you used it it got bigger and stronger. She said the only way it could get that way was using it to understand, but you couldn't open the door to it until you quit being greedy and such with your body mind. Then understanding commenced to take up, and the more you tried to understand, the bigger it got.

Natural, she said, understanding and love was the same thing; except folks went at it back'ards too many times, trying to pretend they loved things when they didn't understand them. Which can't be done.

I see right out that I was going to commence trying to understand practical everybody, for I sure didn't want to come up with a hickor'nut spirit.”
― Forrest Carter, quote from The Education of Little Tree

“Wisdom is one of the few things that looks bigger the further away it is.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from Witches Abroad

“Shame, however, was what I felt seeping through me as though it stained my white bones black.”
― Lian Hearn, quote from Across the Nightingale Floor

“Ancients pulled metals more precious than gold from the center of the earth - They spun into giant lacy wings that flew them to the stars and back
"Is that what you'd do with wings?"
She shook her head "No, I'd fly to the stars, but I'd never come back”
― Mary E. Pearson, quote from The Kiss of Deception

“People talk about books being an escape, but here on the tube, this one feels more like a lifeline...The motion of the train makes her head rattle, but her eyes lock on the words the way a figure skater might choose a focal point as she spins, and just like that, she's grounded again.”
― Jennifer E. Smith, quote from The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight

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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.

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