Quotes from The Willoughbys

“Once she read a book but found it distasteful because it contained adjectives.”
― Lois Lowry, quote from The Willoughbys

“We are four worthy orphans with a no-nonsense nanny."

Like Mary Poppins?" suggested the man, with a pleased look of recognition.

Not one bit like that fly-by-night woman," Nanny said with a sniff. "It almost gives me diabetes just to think of her: all those disgusting spoonfuls of sugar!”
― Lois Lowry, quote from The Willoughbys

“I have learned over the course of my many years that it is a bad idea, usually, to investigate piteous weeping but always a fine thing to look into a giggle.”
― Lois Lowry, quote from The Willoughbys

“Oh! Lovely!" said Nanny. "You are an old fashioned family, like us. We are four worthy orphans with a no-nonsense nanny."
"Like Mary Poppins?" suggested the man, with a pleased look of recognition.
"Not one bit like that fly-by-night woman," Nanny said with a sniff. "It almost gives me diabetes just to think of her: all those disgusting spoonfuls of sugar! None of that for me. I am simply a competent and professional nanny...”
― Lois Lowry, quote from The Willoughbys

“It’s Peter the goat-herd,” murmured Tim in astonishment, “right out of Heidi! We can teach him to read and write, and then we’ll all smile and hug and say religious things!”
― Lois Lowry, quote from The Willoughbys

“She married, surprisingly, her stepbrother Tim, who, as predicted, became an attorney. The”
― Lois Lowry, quote from The Willoughbys

“AFFABLE means good-natured and friendly. There are whole groups of people who are known for being affable. Cheerleaders, for example. Or Mormon missionaries.”
― Lois Lowry, quote from The Willoughbys

“CONSPIRACY is a plan to do something subversive. Three guys planning a camping trip . . . nah, that’s just three guys planning a camping trip. But three guys planning to take a camping trip and rob a bank along the way . . . that’s a conspiracy.”
― Lois Lowry, quote from The Willoughbys

“IGNOMINIOUS means shamefully weak and ineffective. Oliver Twist saying, “Please sir, might I have some more?” would be ignominious, except that he isn’t shameful, just sort of pathetic. This book has ignominious illustrations. They are shamefully weak because the person who drew them is not an artist.”
― Lois Lowry, quote from The Willoughbys

“NEFARIOUS means utterly, completely wicked. The character in The Wizard of Oz could have been called the Nefarious Witch of the West but authors like to use the same beginning consonant, often. Perhaps L. Frank Baum crossed out nefarious after wicked came to his mind. Thank goodness, because Nefarious would be a terrible name for a musical.”
― Lois Lowry, quote from The Willoughbys

“The Willoughby parents frequently forgot that they had children and became quite irritable when they were reminded of it.”
― Lois Lowry, quote from The Willoughbys

“Squalor has nothing to do with money. Squalor happens when people are sad. And”
― Lois Lowry, quote from The Willoughbys

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Popular quotes

“He thought about alone in Constantinople that time, having quarreled in Paris before he had gone out. He had whored the whole time and then, when that was over, and he had failed to kill his loneliness, but only made it worse, he had written her, the first one, the one who left him, a letter telling her how he had never been able to kill it . . . . How when he thought he saw her outside the Regence one time it made him go all faint and sick inside, and that he would follow a woman that looked like her in some way, along the Boulevard, afraid to see it was not she, afraid to lose the feeling it gave him. How every one he had slept with had only made him miss her more. How what she had done could never matter since he could never cure himself of loving her.”
― Ernest Hemingway, quote from The Complete Short Stories

“Those unable to catalog the past are doomed to repeat it.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The End

“Carnal embrace is sexual congress, which is the insertion of the male genital organ into the female genital organ for purposes of procreation and pleasure. Fermat’s last theorem, by contrast, asserts that when x, y and z are whole numbers each raised to power of n, the sum of the first two can never equal the third when n is greater than 2.”
― Tom Stoppard, quote from Arcadia

“كيف نستطيع أن نعيش علي هذه الأرض ونحن نغمض عيوننا أو أن نجد الحياة أمراً بديهياً؟”
― Jostein Gaarder, quote from The Solitaire Mystery: A Novel About Family and Destiny

“The rock, for its part, is not even aware of our existence because we are alive for only a brief instant of its lifespan. To it, we are like flashes in the dark.”
― Michael Crichton, quote from The Andromeda Strain

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About BookQuoters

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.