“You speak English beautifully, which means you can't be English.”
― Robert Aickman, quote from The Wine-Dark Sea
“It is amazing how full a life a man can lead without for one moment being alive at all, except sometimes when sleeping.”
― Robert Aickman, quote from The Wine-Dark Sea
“Enchanted islands are hard to understand,' he said. 'I've always thought that. It worried me even as a child. The trouble is that you can never be sure where the enchantment begins and where it ends.”
― Robert Aickman, quote from The Wine-Dark Sea
“Dreams, [...], are misleading, because they make life seem real. When it loses the support of dreams, life dissolves.”
― Robert Aickman, quote from The Wine-Dark Sea
“No milk. It is black coffee, pure but strong, that fortifies against the powers of darkness with which the world is filled.”
― Robert Aickman, quote from The Wine-Dark Sea
“Things mechanical are like the ladies,’ continued Toby. ‘You need to understand their ways. If you understand them, they’ll do what you want from the start. If you don’t, they’ve got you. And then God help you.”
― Robert Aickman, quote from The Wine-Dark Sea
“Sometimes you think you have all of tomorrow ahead of you,’ Mama often said. ‘When the sun is shinning, think of the time it won’t be, because even when you’re sitting in your house with the doors shut, misfortune can fall from above.”
― Lisa See, quote from Shanghai Girls
“She's afraid to tell me anything important, knowing I'll only turn around and write about it. In my mind, I'm like a friendly junkman, building things from the little pieces of scrap I find here and there, but my family's started to see things differently. Their personal lives are the so-called pieces of scrap I so casually pick up, and they're sick of it. More and more often their stories begin with the line "You have to swear you'll never repeat this." I always promise, but it's generally understood that my word means nothing.”
― David Sedaris, quote from Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim
“I’m smart in some ways- pretty good vocabulary, solid at math – but I am definitely the stupidest smart person there is… I was going to be the worst friend in the history of dying girls… Because I don’t really have a moral compass and I need to rely on (Earl) for guidance, or else I might accidentally become like a hermit or a terrorist or something. How fucked up is that.”
― Jesse Andrews, quote from Me and Earl and the Dying Girl
“Puzzle pieces don't always connect do they?”
― Ellen Hopkins, quote from Fallout
“Calais is an interesting place that exists solely for the purpose of giving English people in shell suits somewhere to go for the day.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from Notes from a Small Island
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.