“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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“Sometimes it’s better to hold onto what you have, rather than risk what might be.”
― H.M. Ward, quote from Demon Kissed
“a woman who could rescue herself was a woman who would never be in need.”
― Alice Hoffman, quote from The Red Garden
“Infatuation is not quite the same thing as love; it's more like love's shady second cousin who's always borrowing money and can't hold down a job.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, quote from Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
“It is better to be alone, she figures, than to be with someone who can't see who you are. It is better to lead than to follow. It is better to speak up than stay silent. It is better to open doors than to shut them on people.
She will not be simple and sweet. She will not be what people tell her to be. That Bunny Rabbit is dead.”
― E. Lockhart, quote from The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks
“If I program ’ware with an Anglo-Ubiq word and play it, you understand it,” Scile said. “If I do the same with a word in Language, and play it to an Ariekes, I understand it, but to them it means nothing, because it’s only sound, and that’s not where the meaning lives. It needs a mind behind it.”
― China Miéville, quote from Embassytown
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Until NovemberBookQuoters 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.
