“There's the road to heaven, and there's the road to hell, and there? That's the road to Faerie.”
― Ellen Kushner, quote from Thomas the Rhymer
“It was strange to see that no matter what color the clothing first appeared—and they were all hues, from earthy copper and garnet to the blue of sky and shadow—in different light all turned to some shade of green, as if there were a third plane to the cloth’s weaving beyond the warp and weft.”
― Ellen Kushner, quote from Thomas the Rhymer
“She is all that is gracious, Her spirit is comely, The work of her hands is fair.”
― Ellen Kushner, quote from Thomas the Rhymer
“Totta puhuakseni en piittaa paljonkaan: hyvä tarina on hyvä tarina, tuli se mistä tahansa.”
― Ellen Kushner, quote from Thomas the Rhymer
“All the while he's been moving towards her, both stoat to rabbit and moth to flame. And she's staring at him, flame-bright and rabbit-scared, too brave to look away.”
― Ellen Kushner, quote from Thomas the Rhymer
“In the sleepless dark, all things are possible, the worst most likely, all darkness visible. There he lay, as near as comfort, as far as the other side of death, silent and far away in sleep.”
― Ellen Kushner, quote from Thomas the Rhymer
“Blood—” I rasped. “The earth cannot hold all the blood that’s shed on it. And so the stream flows below. We have passed through it now; soon it will be gone from you.”
― Ellen Kushner, quote from Thomas the Rhymer
“So the question arose now, as it had in the wake of the Mongol holocaust: if the triumphant expansion of the Muslim project proved the truth of the revelation, what did the impotence of Muslims in the face of these new foreigners signify about the faith?
With this question looming over the Muslim world, movements to revive Islam could not be extricated from the need to resurrect Muslim power. Reformers could not merely offer proposals for achieving more authentic religions experiences. They had to expound on how the authenticity they proposed would get history back on course, how their proposals would restore the dignity and splendor of the Umma, how they would get Muslims moving again toward the proper endpoint of history: perfecting the community of justice and compassion that flourished in Medina in the original golden moment and enlarging it until it included all the world.
Many reformers emerged and many movements bubbled up, but all of them can sorted into three general sorts of responses to the troubling question.
One response was to say that what needed changing was not Islam, but Muslims. Innovation, alterations, and accretions had corrupted the faith, so that no one was practicing the true Islam anymore. What Muslims needed to do was to shut out Western influence and restore Islam to its pristine, original form.
Another response was to say that the West was right. Muslims had gotten mired in obsolete religious ideas; they had ceded control of Islam to ignorant clerics who were out of touch with changing times; they needed to modernize their faith along Western lines by clearing out superstition, renouncing magical thinking, and rethinking Islam as an ethical system compatible with science and secular activities.
A third response was to declare Islam the true religion but concede that Muslims had certain things to learn from the West. In this view, Muslims needed to rediscover and strengthen the essence of their own faith, history and traditions, but absorb Western learning in the fields of science and technology. According to this river of reform, Muslims needed to modernize but could do so in a distinctively Muslim way: science was compatible with the Muslim faith and modernization did not have to mean Westernization.”
― Tamim Ansary, quote from Destiny Disrupted: A History of the World Through Islamic Eyes
“He did what good lawyers always do. He shifted his argument in the direction his audience was already going.”
― Jeffrey Toobin, quote from The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court
“So how do you know when the boy's perfect for you?' Dulcie asked
Betty gave her a tender look. 'You'll just know. That sounds vague, I know, but it's true.”
― Lesley Pearse, quote from Trust Me
“You see, Ross, in every right marriage, in every good marriage a woman has to be three things, don't she? She's got to be a wife and look after a man's comforts in the way a man should be looked after. Then she's got to bear his children and get all swelled up like a summer pumpkin and then often-times feed them after and smell of babies and have them crawling all about her...But then, third, she has also to try and be his mistress at the same time; someone he is still interested in; someone he wants, not just the person who happens to be there and convenient; someone a bit mysterious...someone whose knee or -- or shoulder he wouldn't instantly recognize if he saw it beside him in bed. It's -- it's impossible.”
― Winston Graham, quote from The Black Moon
“I liked the way he handled himself in the kitchen. I like men who cook. Men who cook are generally good lovers.”
― Janice Dickinson, quote from No Lifeguard on Duty: The Accidental Life of the World's First Supermodel
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.