“I wanted to leave the whole war behind me, and yet I was seeing something on that battlefield that demanded commemoration. It was unholy ground, but I wanted to thank God for showing it to me. I would never again look at a man without wondering what crimes he was capable of committing. That seemed important to know.”
― Robert Hicks, quote from The Widow of the South
“Made me wonder whether putting names to time made much of a difference anyway. What did it measure? Not how much life passes. Hell no. Your whole life can pass and be changed in a second or in a century. Don’t matter.”
― Robert Hicks, quote from The Widow of the South
“Until I get the keys to the Kingdom, Lord, I ain't giving up.”
― Robert Hicks, quote from The Widow of the South
“Had the Battle of Franklin ever really ended? Carrie walked her cemetery, and around her the wounds closed up and scarred over, but only in that way that an oak struck by lightning heals itself by twisting and bending around the wound: it is still recognizably a tree, it still lives as a tree, it still puts out its leaves and acorns, but its center, hidden deep within the curtain of green, remains empty and splintered where it hasn't been grotesquely scarred over. We are happy the tree hasn't died, and from the proper angle we can look on it and suppose that it is the same tree as it ever was, but it is not and never will be.”
― Robert Hicks, quote from The Widow of the South
“The only glory to be had was the glory of surviving.”
― Robert Hicks, quote from The Widow of the South
“Through the late afternoon and into the evening, there were more casualties those five hours at Franklin than in the nineteen hours of D-Day—and more than twice as many casualties as at Pearl Harbor. There were moments so bloody and overwhelming that even the enemy wept. When a fourteen-year-old Missouri drummer boy—a mascot of Cockrell’s Brigade—charged up to a loaded and primed Ohio cannon and shoved a fence rail into its mouth, witnesses said the child turned into what was described as the “mist of a ripe tomato.”
― Robert Hicks, quote from The Widow of the South
“You only had to be in one fight to know what a beautiful thing a trench could be. The first minié ball whizzes by your head, and you’re a digging man evermore.”
― Robert Hicks, quote from The Widow of the South
“You can get so that every step, every little obstacle on the battlefield, becomes so big that you can’t see much past it, and when you do get past, it’s sometimes hard to remember what the hell you were supposed to be doing.”
― Robert Hicks, quote from The Widow of the South
“What a silly routine, Natalie thought, not realizing, sitting there alone on the stool in the center of the ring of girls, how she was jeopardizing her own future in college, her own future for four years and perhaps for the rest of her life; how even worse than the actual being a bad sport was the state of mind which led her into defiance of this norm, this ring of placid, masked girls, with their calm futures ahead and their regular pasts proven beyond a doubt; how one person stepping however aside from their meaningless, echoing standards, set perhaps by a violent movement before their recollection, and handed down to them by other placid creatures, might lose a seat among them by questions, by rebellion, by anything except a cheerful smile and a resolution to hurt other people.”
― Shirley Jackson, quote from Hangsaman
“No domestic dispute between Franny and David had inspired the removal of their wedding rings. She would take hers off at work when she was giving scalp massages. Once she thought she had lost the ring, but she found it in the treatment room on a candleholder David had made for her during a personal failure of a pottery class he had taken the year he lost his job. After she found her ring, she started leaving it at home.”
― Amelia Gray, quote from Threats
“Um dos estereótipos mais estranhos sobre nós é que homens gay odeiam lésbicas e vice-versa. Deixe-me poupar o seu tempo. Se você está conversando com homens gay que desprezam lésbicas (ou então depreciam a vagina como conceito), está falando com imbecis misóginos. Se você está falando com uma mulher gay que classifica todos os homens gay como odiadores de lésbicas, você está falando com uma homofóbica sexista.”
― James Dawson, quote from This Book is Gay
“When the gospel is understood primarily in terms of entrance rather than joyous participation, it can actually serve to cut people off from the explosive, liberating experience of the God who is an endless giving circle of joy and creativity.”
― Rob Bell, quote from Love Wins Low Price CD: Love Wins Low Price CD
“We are the memory keepers and the trappers of time; stealers of stolen glances and breathless lungs from all that have been taken away. We are the noticers of subtle signs hidden in plain sight by a benevolent universe bigger than we'd ever believe...We are the directionless wanderers and the destinationless travelers and we are the crumpled map that never got packed to join us. We are the cinematic lovers and the translucent curtains saturated in light. The soundtrack to the moments without sounds and the swiftness that two bodies can become one in the stillness of a second. We, says the last string pulled out, the final string that kept it all together, balled up tight, filling us after all this time, We, are the chasers of the light.”
― Tyler Knott Gregson, quote from Chasers of the Light: Poems from the Typewriter Series
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.