“I don’t need your praise
to survive. I was here first,
before you were here, before
you ever planted a garden.
And I’ll be here when only the sun and moon
are left, and the sea, and the wide field.
I will constitute the field.”
― Louise Glück, quote from The Wild Iris
“...whatever/ returns from oblivion/ returns to find a voice.”
― Louise Glück, quote from The Wild Iris
“I watched the first shoots
like wings tearing the soil, and it was my heart
broken by the blight, the black spot so quickly
multiplying in the rows. I doubt
you have a heart, in our understanding of
that term. You who do not discriminate
between the dead and the living, who are, in consequence,
immune to foreshadowing...”
― Louise Glück, quote from The Wild Iris
“the powerful are always lied to since the weak are always driven to panic”
― Louise Glück, quote from The Wild Iris
“End of Winter”
Over the still world, a bird calls
waking solitary among black boughs.
You wanted to be born; I let you be born.
When has my grief ever gotten
in the way of your pleasure?
Plunging ahead
into the dark and light at the same time
eager for sensation
as though you were some new thing, wanting
to express yourselves
all brilliance, all vivacity
never thinking
this would cost you anything,
never imagining the sound of my voice
as anything but part of you—
you won’t hear it in the other world,
not clearly again,
not in birdcall or human cry,
not the clear sound, only
persistent echoing
in all sound that means good-bye, good-bye—
the one continuous line
that binds us to each other.”
― Louise Glück, quote from The Wild Iris
“Remember that time you made the wish?
I make a lot of wishes.
The time I lied to you
about the butterfly. I always wondered
what you wished for.
What do you think I wished for?
I don't know. That I'd come back,
that we'd somehow be together in the end.
I wished for what I always wish for.
I wished for another poem.”
― Louise Glück, quote from The Wild Iris
Louise Glück
Born place: in New York City, The United States
Born date April 22, 1943
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“There are some things one can only achieve by a deliberate leap in the opposite direction.’ —Franz Kafka”
― John Marrs, quote from The Wronged Sons
“Dostoyevsky described hell as perhaps nothing more than a room with a chair in it. This room has several chairs. A young man sits in one.”
― Bruce Robinson, quote from Withnail and I: The Screenplay
“You don’t even know what you’ll miss about them. Oh, you have some notion, I reckon. You figure you’ll miss seeing them everyday, stuff like that. But, ye’ve no idea about them little things—”
― Sheila Kay Adams, quote from My Old True Love
“Under his breath, he repeated the words of Xenophon: “Anger undermines effective communication with your horse.”
― Jojo Moyes, quote from The Horse Dancer
“Look, I know Mom talks about the big picture. She wants you to remember that you'll find new friends, that life is always changing, sometimes in really good ways. But life is also what's happening NOW, Georges. What Dallas and Carter are doing is happening NOW, and you can't just wait for it to be over. We have to do something about it. Now.”
― Rebecca Stead, quote from Liar & Spy
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The Elements of Styl...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.
