“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
“In the Somme valley, the back of language broke. It could no longer carry its former meanings. World War I changed the life of words and images in art, radically and forever. It brought our culture into the age of mass-produced, industrialized death. This, at first, was indescribable.”
― Robert Hughes, quote from The Shock of the New
“Perhaps nothing speaks more eloquently of the variability of spelling in the age than the fact that a dictionary published in 1604, A Table Alphabeticall of Hard Words, spelled “words” two ways on the title page.”
― Bill Bryson, quote from Shakespeare: The World as Stage
“asked if you had a hand in this,’ she began a moment later. ‘But I think there was no need. It’s obvious you had a hand in it. It’s obvious you are his friend. And if someone has friends, and he loses everything in spite of that, it’s obvious the friends are to blame. For what they did, or for what they didn’t do.’ ‘What could I have done?”
― Andrzej Sapkowski, quote from Time of Contempt
“Trouble is, you can't run away from yourself." Coach snatched the towel from his shoulder, folded into a perfect square, and set it in the space between us. "Unfortunately," he said, "ain't nobody that fast.”
― Jason Reynolds, quote from Ghost
“Don't you know how much I hero-worshiped you when I was a kid? You
were Marie Curie crossed with Emily Bronte crossed with Joan of Arc to
me when I was ten. And when i told you that, you said my cultural
references were the sign of a colonized mind.”
― Kamila Shamsie, quote from Broken Verses
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.