“You get no writing done at all if you sit at a table with a view. You'd spent the whole time watching the birds or thinking about what you would like to be doing out of doors, instead of flogging yourself to work out of sheer boredom.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Thornyhold
“I suppose my mother could have been a witch if she had chosen to. But she met my father, who was a rather saintly clergyman, and he cancelled her out.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Thornyhold
“I had always been content to know that there was more in the living world than we could hope to understand.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Thornyhold
“Literature and fiction are full of femmes fatales, but there is also an homme fatal, an altogether rarer bird, and pity help the lonely and impressionable female who comes within range of him.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Thornyhold
“William's mother, dead these six years. He spoke of her with love, but without grief. Six years, and whatever the loss, happiness steals back.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Thornyhold
“I assure you, I've come to one of those natural breaks in the book, where one can walk away and let things go on working in the subconscious. It's true, don't look so unbelieving. It means I can afford to tear myself away from my view of the pigsties and go out on parole, as much as I like and you'll put up with.”
― Mary Stewart, quote from Thornyhold
“I’m grateful for the moments. Because in the end, it’s the moments that make life worth living…”
― Marie Hall, quote from A Moment
“Get on the bed, Pet, and show me what’s mine. Show me what I own, so I can show it exactly why it belongs to me. There’s a reason you belong to me, and it isn’t because I can brand you, or own you. It’s because when I fuck you, I make sure I do it good enough that when you look at another man, the only thing you can think about, is how sore your sweet flesh is from what I did to it.”
― Amelia Hutchins, quote from Seducing Destiny
“I found myself thinking of Potts as a tragic figure, a guy who'd been a happy towheaded kid you'd love to take fishing with you, who'd mistakenly invested in academic medicine when he'd have been happy in his family business, and who'd become a splattered mess on the parking lot of a hospital in a city he'd despised. What had been the seductiveness of medicine? Why?”
― Samuel Shem, quote from The House of God
“Because if I have a wicked stepmother and two evil stepsisters, aren't I supposed to get a prince?”
― Melissa Kantor, quote from If I Have a Wicked Stepmother, Where's My Prince?
“Do you think Gandhi was interested in Art?" I asked.
"Gandhi? No, of course not."
"I think you're right," I agreed. "Neither in art nor in science. And that is why we killed him."
"We?"
"Yes, we. The intelligent, the active, the forward-looking, the believers in Order and Perfection. Whereas Gandhi was a reactionary who believed only in people. Squalid little individuals governing themselves, village by village, and worshiping the Brahman who is also Atman. It was intolerable. No wonder we bumped him off."
But even as I spoke I was thinking that that wasn't the whole story. The whole story included an inconsistency, almost a betrayal. This man who believed only in people had got himself involved in the sub-human mass-madness of nationalism, in the would-be superhuman, but actually diabolic, institution of the nation-state. He got himself involved in these things, imagining that he could mitigate the madness and convert what was satanic in the state to something like humanity. But nationalism and the politics of power had proved too much for him. It is not at the center, not from within the organization, that the saint can cure our regimented insanity; it is only from without, at the periphery. If he makes himself a part of the machine, in which the collective madness is incarnated, one or the other of two things is bound to happen. Either he remains himself, in which case the machine will use him as long as it can and, when he becomes unusable, reject or destroy him. Or he will be transformed into the likeness of the mechanism with and against which he works, and in this case we shall see Holy Inquisitions and alliances with any tyrant prepared to guarantee ecclesiastical privileges.”
― Aldous Huxley, quote from Ape and Essence
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.