“Lists are a form of power.”
― A.S. Byatt, quote from The Virgin in the Garden
“...it is not possible to create the opposite of what one has always known, simply because the opposite is believed to be desired. Human beings need what they already know, even horrors.”
― A.S. Byatt, quote from The Virgin in the Garden
“There was a moment during this time, when his face was on hers, cheek on cheek, brow on brow, heavy skull on skull, through soft skin and softer flesh. He thought: skulls separate people. In this one sense, I could say, they would say, I lose myself in her. But in that bone box, she thinks and thinks, as I think in mine, things the other won't hear, can't hear, though we go on like this for sixty years. What does she think I am? He had no idea. He had no idea what she was.”
― A.S. Byatt, quote from The Virgin in the Garden
“A metamorphosis... The shining butterfly of the soul from the pupa of the body. Larva, pupa, imago. An image of art.”
― A.S. Byatt, quote from The Virgin in the Garden
“Those words . . . national and portrait. They were both to do with identity: the identity of a culture (place, language and history), the identity of an individual human being as an object for mimetic representation.”
― A.S. Byatt, quote from The Virgin in the Garden
“Contemporary' was in those days [1953] synonymous with 'modern' as it had not been before and is not now [1977].”
― A.S. Byatt, quote from The Virgin in the Garden
A.S. Byatt
Born place: in Sheffield, Yorkshire, The United Kingdom
Born date August 24, 1936
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“But I would make it through “Death Valley.” Lee, Thurston, and I, and then just the two of us, stood there. My about-to-be-ex husband and I faced that mass of bobbing wet Brazilians, our voices together spell-checking the old words, and for me it was a staccato soundtrack of surreal raw energy and anger and pain: Hit it. Hit it. Hit it. I don’t think I had ever felt so alone in my whole life.”
― Kim Gordon, quote from Girl in a Band
“Anyway, the job didn’t call for deep thinking: if you thought too much, brought your insight and intellect to bear on the problems of the nation, you’d get out front of the President, or worse still, off to the side. That’s the surest way down the trash chute in the White House. There’s only one question that the Vice President needs to ask: “What’s the President saying on this?” Anything else is begging for trouble, and George Bush had brains enough to figure that out.”
― Richard Ben Cramer, quote from What It Takes: The Way to the White House
“She was a collector of lost souls. The forgotten, the bypassed, the most beautiful at heart. Rimmel saw beauty no one else saw, and even though how she made others feel was amazing, it was nothing compared to the way it made her shine.”
― Cambria Hebert, quote from #Bae
“The books were old
and well worn, the cover of one of them had nearly broken through in its
middle, and it was held together with a few threads. "Everything is so
dirty here," said K., shaking his head, and before he could pick the
books up the woman wiped some of the dust off with her apron. K. took
hold of the book that lay on top and threw it open, an indecent picture
appeared. A man and a woman sat naked on a sofa, the base intent of
whoever drew it was easy to see but he had been so grossly lacking in
skill that all that anyone could really make out were the man and the
woman who dominated the picture with their bodies, sitting in overly
upright postures that created a false perspective and made it difficult
for them to approach each other. K. didn't thumb through that book any
more, but just threw open the next one at its title page, it was a novel
with the title, What Grete Suffered from her Husband, Hans. "So this is
the sort of law book they study here," said K., "this is the sort of
person sitting in judgement over me.”
― Franz Kafka, quote from Proces
“The stars are the one thing that I miss about the earth. They're so constant, steady, bright. I've always loved the stars. You reminded me of them, Persephone," she added quietly.”
― Sarah Diemer, quote from The Dark Wife
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Be Careful What You...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.
