“Nothing had happened to me. I was born with a defective mind. As my father’s sole contribution to my life knifed its way into my mother’s egg, it unleashed a faulty genetic code that warped the normal brain development of fetus me, growing wrong inside my mother. I was a thing that should never have been.”
― Karen Fortunati, quote from The Weight of Zero
“Years of best-friendness, sisterhood, reduced to a complete communication blackout.”
― Karen Fortunati, quote from The Weight of Zero
“But no, there he is, voluntarily chatting away, asking me if I watch some zombie show. I don’t. (Those shows aren’t all that appealing when you relate more to the zombies than the humans.)”
― Karen Fortunati, quote from The Weight of Zero
“And someone who has never felt it can never understand what the absence of emotion feels like. It is a hopelessness of incomprehensible, unspeakable weight.”
― Karen Fortunati, quote from The Weight of Zero
“And before you make that decision to confide, you need to evaluate the friend and the relationship. Have they proved themselves worthy of you?”
― Karen Fortunati, quote from The Weight of Zero
“The world turned upside down - in a good way - for one black velvet night.”
― Karen Fortunati, quote from The Weight of Zero
“All those stars in that big streak that goes over the whole sky? You see them? Those are all the Jews who’ve died. All of them died and went up in the air, and the stars are the stars that they wore on their coats. The stars on the coats come off when their souls float up and the stars live up in the sky forever.”
― Louise Murphy, quote from The True Story of Hansel and Gretel
“How marvelous books are, crossing worlds and centuries, defeating ignorance and, finally, cruel time itself.”
― Gore Vidal, quote from Julian
“I was the great marksman, anyway. If I aimed at nothing, then nothing is what I would hit.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, quote from Deadeye Dick
“Author's Note: I wanted to read the book that would begin to answer some of my questions, because I felt I couldn't write it... I also doubted my ability to handle monsoon and slum conditions after years of lousy health. I made the decision to try in the course of an absurdly long night at home alone in Washington, D.C. Tripping over an unabridged dictionary, I found myself on the floor with a punctured lung and three broken ribs in a spreading pool of Diet Dr Pepper, unable to slither to a phone. In the hours that passed, I arrived at a certain clarity. Having proved myself ill-suited to safe cohabitation with an unabridged dictionary, I had little to lose by pursuing my interests in another quarter-- a place beyond my so-called expertise, where the risk of failure would be great but the interactions somewhat more meaningful.”
― Katherine Boo, quote from Behind the Beautiful Forevers: Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity
“Okay, that one's pretty good," Fred acknowledged, after she'd told him a particularly filthy joke. "But have you heard the one about the baker's wife?"
"No," Kyra said.
"Rumor has it, she married him for his buns." Fred burst out laughing.
Kyra groaned. "Okay, that was just bad.”
― Bridget Zinn, quote from Poison
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.