“Trying to fulfill earthly desires was like carrying water to the sea; a never- ending task, and an ultimately useless one.”
“The mandalas were meant to be objects of contemplation, aids to meditation, their proportions magically balanced to purify and calm the mind. To stare at a mandala was to experience, if only briefly, the nothingness that is at the heart of enlightenment.”
“Lead me into all misfortune. Only by that path can I transform the negative into the positive.”
“He had done the right thing and that was what counted. That was the best you could do in life. How others took it was beyond his control.”
“people were like icebergs--most of what really went on, especially the ugliness, was submerged”
“a walther ppk. you're a james bond fan, i imagine....”
“The point of a cruise ship is the cruise itself. But an ocean liner’s job is to transport people on a schedule. The”
“What made marriage so difficult back then was yet again that instigator of so many other sorts of heartbreak: the oversize brain. That cumbersome computer could hold so many contradictory opinions on so many different subjects all at once, and switch from one opinion or subject to another one so quickly, that a discussion between a husband and wife under stress could end up like a fight between blindfolded people wearing roller skates.”
“Everything with a beginning has an ending. Any magic that can be done, can be undone. Anything you can make, can be unmade.”
“Coming back last time to the house she grew up in, Isabel had been reminded of the darkness that had descended with her brothers' deaths, how loss had leaked all over her mother's life like a stain. As a fourteen-year-old, Isabel had searched the dictionary. She knew that if a wife lost a husband, there was a whole new word to describe who she was: she was now a widow. A husband became a widower. But if a parent loss a child, there was no special label for their grief. They were still just a mother or a father, even if they no longer had a son or daughter. That seemed odd. As to her own status, she wondered whether she was still technically a sister, now that her adored brothers had died.”
“But Calvin is no kind and loving god! He's one of the old gods! He demands sacrifice!”
“The little ball went up, then down, then up in his palm. My inner golden retriever couldn’t look away.”
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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