“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
“It's simple. If you go to see 'Saturday Night Fever' expecting it to be good, it's a corker. However, if you go expecting it to be a crock of shit, it's that, too. Thus 'Saturday Night Fever' can exist in two mutually opposing states at the very same time, yet only by the weight of our expectations. From this principle we can deduce that any opposing states can be governed by human expectation - even, as in the case of retro-deficit-engineering, the present use of a future technology."
"I think I understand that. Does it work with any John Travolta movie?"
"Only the artistically ambiguous ones such as 'Pulp Fiction' or 'Face/Off.' 'Battlefield Earth' doesn't work, because it's a stinker no matter how much you think you're going to like it, and 'Get Shorty' doesn't work either, because you'd be hard-pressed not to enjoy it, irrespective of any preconceived notions.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from First Among Sequels
“But I did it because you can't constantly be afraid of what might happen. If you do, you lose control of what is happening, and all the joy and pain it holds for you”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Birthright
“I don’t usually look people in the eye when I have sex with them.”
“Why not?”
“Apparently it makes me fall in love with them.”
― Olivia Cunning, quote from Double Time
“I sigh into her and give up the fight. My fingers thread through her hair, pulling her closer, knowing I'll never get enough of her. She intoxicates me, but not in the way that leaves a man senseless. She lifts me up like a breath of sweet air, like sun on my skin, like...god.
No, not god. Like the idea of god, the one I imagined when I was a boy.”
― Stacey Jay, quote from Romeo Redeemed
“I've made up boyfriends too' Karen said, nodding her head slowly. 'The best man I ever dated was all in my head' 'Thank you!' I exclaimed.”
― Kristan Higgins, quote from Too Good to Be True
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.