“We all fight on two fronts, the one facing the enemy, the one facing what we do to the enemy.”
― Joseph Boyden, quote from Three Day Road
“This memory, this pretty little stone, I examine it with my eyes closed tight. Turn it over in my fingers.”
― Joseph Boyden, quote from Three Day Road
“In school, it got so that Elijah learned to talk his way out of anything, gave great long speeches so that his words snaked themselves like vines around the nuns until they could no longer move, [...].”
― Joseph Boyden, quote from Three Day Road
“I can see that Elijah knows exactly what Thompson’s asking. Thompson is asking if Elijah likes killing. Elijah considers it for a moment. ‘It’s in my blood,’ he finally says.”
― Joseph Boyden, quote from Three Day Road
“I would give my left arm to fly in one of those aeroplanes...”
― Joseph Boyden, quote from Three Day Road
“You are a hookimaw. Happiness is not yours to have.”
― Joseph Boyden, quote from Three Day Road
“The act of self-denial seems to confer on us the right to be harsh and merciless toward others.”
― Eric Hoffer, quote from The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements
“When I was a kid I used to drink from the tap all the time. I'd run back into the flat all hot and sweaty from playing and didn't even bother putting it in a glass, just turned the tap on and stuck my mouth underneath it. If my mom caught me doing it she used to scold me, but my dad just said that I had to be careful. 'What if a fish jumped out?' he used to say. 'You'd swallow it before you knew it was there.' Dad was always saying stuff like that and it wasn't until I was seventeen that I realised it was because he was stoned all the time.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, quote from Midnight Riot
“Inertia propulsion!” Pierre exclaimed. “On our last shift we were teaching them Newton’s law of gravity. Today they have inertia drives! Where will they be tomorrow?” “They probably will be able to control space and time and won’t have to bother with such clumsy things as black hole gravity generators and inertia drives,” Amalita replied. “But now I see why we were so awkward. Their main spacecraft will stay fifteen meters away from our spacecraft, but it is so massive that we will experience about one-third of a gee from it, pulling me out of the console chair and over to the viewing port. I guess I could manage to twirl once as I fall so they can see the human joints in action, but I bet I am going to be clumsier in one-third gee than that animation.” She turned from the screen and looked at him, “I wish you were doing my part, so I could get to see the cheela.” “I don’t know whether you would like it,” Pierre said. “According to this contour plot of the gravity field from the individual craft, although the size and mass of the flitters are much smaller than the main spacecraft, this one is going to come up to less than one meter from my viewing port and my nose is going to be pulling three gees!” He looked down at her body and grinned, “I guess the reason they didn’t choose you is they must know you don’t wear a bra in free-fall and they didn’t want to give you reverse Cooper’s droop.” Amalita turned back to the display, jabbing him with her elbow as she did so, and brought up the next screen full of instructions.”
― Robert L. Forward, quote from Dragon's Egg
“Even potted plants got to be a responsibility, like everything else you took care of that couldn't make decisions for itself.”
― Tove Jansson, quote from The Summer Book
“...Since divine truth and scripture clearly teach us that God, the Creator of all things, is Wisdom, a true philosopher will be a lover of God. That does not mean that all who answer to the name are really in love with genuine wisdom, for it is one thing to be and another to be called a philosopher.”
― Augustine of Hippo, quote from City of God
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.