Quotes from The Twenty-One Balloons

180 pages

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“Half of this story is true and the other half might very well have happened.”
― quote from The Twenty-One Balloons


“The best way of travel, however, if you aren't in any hurry at all, if you don't care where you are going, if you don't like to use your legs, if you don't want to be annoyed at all by any choice of directions, is in a balloon. In a balloon, you can decide only when to start, and usually when to stop. The rest is left entirely to nature.”
― quote from The Twenty-One Balloons


“It seems strange to me that mechanical progress always seems to leave the slower demands of elegance far behind.”
― quote from The Twenty-One Balloons


“That's the peculiar thing about nature," explained Mr. F., "it guards it's rarest treasures with greatest care.”
― quote from The Twenty-One Balloons


Popular quotes

“All I ever wanted, nira I expected: Nonette, upon whom my life pivots.

The name I give my fire when I lay down, defenseless before its majestic awfulness.

A little no, a little negation. A French girly pout, the syllables for which have been found at last.

All my hurt dug up, exposed for dissection in the glaring light, and finally melted away by the loving caresses of her yielding thighs.

And the girl who took such simple joy in this terrible duty.

Nonette.”
― Julian Darius, quote from Nira/Sussa


“Alle waren jetzt damit beschäftigt, den Tisch zu decken, und niemand außer ihr bemerkte, was das Baby tat. Es drückte seine Lippen in das Innere von Avrams Hand, blökte ein sanftes und angenehmes Ba-ba-ba und genoss mit seinem ganzen Sein den Klang und das Kitzeln, das es wohl in den Lippen spürte. Auch in Oras Hals und Mund schwebte ein anregendes Summen, ihre Lippen spürten es auch, und in ihr murmelte es stimmlos ba-ba-ba.”
― David Grossman, quote from To the End of the Land


“We are the sum of our lives and not simply pieces of them. We are the whole of our time in this world.”
― Terry Brooks, quote from Bloodfire Quest


“But rituals turn us all into fucking idiots. Like those birds that sleep with their heads facing backwards because their ancestors slept with their heads under their wings. Plutarch says carrying new wives across thresholds is stupid because we don't remember that it refers to the rape of the Sabine women - and that's fucking Plutarch, two thousand years ago. We still draw the Reaper with a scythe. We should draw him driving a John Deere for Archer Daniels Midland.”
― Josh Bazell, quote from Beat the Reaper


“Human thought, flying on the trapezes of the star-filled universe, with mathematics stretched beneath, was like an acrobat working with a net but suddenly noticing that in reality there is no net.”
― Vladimir Nabokov, quote from Glory


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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.

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.