“You won't further the cause of human rights by walking away with your morals intact. Change is about getting your hand dirty.”
― Brian Malloy, quote from The Year of Ice
“The halls are full of kids, scrawny ones and fat ones, cool ones and uncool ones, freaks and jocks, cheerleaders and dogs, burnouts and nerds. It’s like Berlin, divided, except there are more walls in this city, and they’re better guarded.”
― Brian Malloy, quote from The Year of Ice
“That's the thing with the dead, they get to say nothing, forever.”
― Brian Malloy, quote from The Year of Ice
“She was a real quiet woman. But maybe we just weren't listening.”
― Brian Malloy, quote from The Year of Ice
“But there’s this thing in her voice, like what my mom called “doublespeak.” Saying one thing and meaning another. Aunt Nora told me it was leftover from English rule. She said, “That’s the only good thing to ever come of colonialism, Kevin. The Irish can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you look forward to the trip.”
― Brian Malloy, quote from The Year of Ice
“Tis a child that dreams there’s something better ’round the corner. It’s a grown man who knows it’s right there in front of him.”
― Brian Malloy, quote from The Year of Ice
“Any story worth telling is worth exaggerating.”
― Brian Malloy, quote from The Year of Ice
“Smile and the world smiles with you, cry and you cry alone.”
― Brian Malloy, quote from The Year of Ice
“All it takes to make a new person is one night with some skank you hardly know. I mean, there I am, screwing her, and now there’s somebody like you or me on the way. It’s so fucking bizarre. You screw up one time and nine months later, bam! A new person.”
― Brian Malloy, quote from The Year of Ice
“I wanna fuck all the time, I've never wanted a baby.”
― Brian Malloy, quote from The Year of Ice
“Mom always used to say that stupid people have more nerve than brains.”
― Brian Malloy, quote from The Year of Ice
“Jon’s brought a couple of bottles of Phillips peppermint schnapps to Van Cleve Park. The label says Enjoy in Moderation. Not much chance of that in this crowd.”
― Brian Malloy, quote from The Year of Ice
“She touches me
The jungle lights up with incinerating fire
Looks like a flaming serpent
I look into her eyes
I see a movie flickering
Car crashes
People kicking corpses
Men ripping their tracheas out and shaking them at the sky
I think to myself:
I don’t want to survive this one
I want to burn up in the wreckage
Cooking flesh in the jungle”
― Henry Rollins, quote from The Portable Henry Rollins
“It is not important whether what he is chanting is true or not, whether you believe in it or not. Your decision to chant along with him is no measure of your commitment to justice or freedom or whatever lofty principle is at hand. Sometimes, radical slogans are a trap. They are shouted by infiltrators so that a group of students protesting a press crackdown can be depicted as seeking to overthrow the regime. Sometimes they are not traps at all but the frustrated stand of a brave person. But how are you to know? Your objective is to avoid being a pawn, to avoid getting dragged into trouble because you are curious, or believe you are seeing history being made." They”
― Shirin Ebadi, quote from Iran Awakening
“All this talk, for and against and about babies, ” wrote Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “is by men. One would think the men bore the babies, nursed the babies, reared the babies.. . . The women bear and rear the children. The men kill them. Then they say: ‘We are running short of children—make some more.”
― Andrea Dworkin, quote from Right Wing Women
“She lied, sir. She has always lied. I don't think she ever spoke a word of truth. But when she spoke, I believed her.”
― Prosper Mérimée, quote from Carmen
“It's my personal onion theory. See, it's like we've all got layers on layers, going deep inside, to layer ten, that place where we're spiritual and private. But we don't show those deep layers.”
― Dandi Daley Mackall, quote from My Boyfriends' Dogs: The Tales of Adam and Eve and Shirley
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.