“That’s the trouble when you’re young, my hun soul says. You think you have all the time in the world. You think the world will wait until you’re ready.”
― Janie Chang, quote from Three Souls
“He enjoys reading film magazines."
Gaoyin pursed her lips. In our family, that made Tienzhen practically illiterate.”
― Janie Chang, quote from Three Souls
“We can't control other's fates, we can barely manage our own. But we can hope for tomorrow. Tomorrow we can hope for rebirth.”
― Janie Chang, quote from Three Souls
“Not the stout balding man. Not a Nikolai. A Vronsky.”
― Janie Chang, quote from Three Souls
“He gave no reason, but in families such as ours, when it comes to shame, it's possible to gauge with exquisite precision its depth and degree by the surrounding silence. In Sueyin's case, the silence was absolute, her disgrace unredeemable.”
― Janie Chang, quote from Three Souls
“Now that I'm dead, why bother feeling ashamed? Yes, I admit to lust.”
― Janie Chang, quote from Three Souls
“Why is Anna Karenina considered such a great novel? It's all about adultery and the unhappiness it causes, nothing unusual in novels, surely."
"The novel's about family relationships, class, and social change.”
― Janie Chang, quote from Three Souls
“a woman’s true value is measured by the size of her dowry.”
― Janie Chang, quote from Three Souls
“Passover isn't about eating, Hannah," her mother began at last, sighing and pushing her fingers through her silver-streaked hair. "You could have fooled me," Hannah muttered.”
― Jane Yolen, quote from The Devil's Arithmetic
“[T]he vanity of the contents” of individual experience is scrutable as an inessential trapping drawn into a matter by vested interests “…since it is at the same time the vanity of the self that knows itself to be vain”
― Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, quote from Phenomenology of Spirit
“A utopia of judicial reticence: take away life, but prevent the patient from feeling it; deprive the prisoner of all rights, but do not inflict pain; impose penalties free of all pain. Recourse to psycho-pharmacology and to various physiological ‘disconnectors’, even if it is temporary, is a logical consequence of this ‘non-corporal’ penality. The”
― Michel Foucault, quote from Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison
“El siglo XX también vio nacer otra gran teoría parcial de la naturaleza: la mecánica cuántica. Esta teoría trata los fenómenos que se producen a escalas muy pequeñas. Nuestra concepción del big bang nos indica que debió de haber un momento en que el universo muy primitivo era tan pequeño que, incluso al estudiar su estructura «a gran escala», no es posible ignorar los efectos de pequeña escala de la mecánica cuántica.
Nuestra mayor esperanza de obtener una comprensión completa del universo desde su principio hasta su final implica combinar estas dos teorías parciales en una sola teoría cuántica de la gravedad. [...] Cuando se combina la relatividad general con el principio de incertidumbre de la mecánica cuántica surge la posibilidad de que tanto el espacio como el tiempo sean finitos, pero sin tener bordes ni fronteras. Y es posible que las leyes ordinarias de la ciencia se cumplan en todos los sitios, incluida la región inicial del tiempo, sin necesidad de que haya en ella singularidad alguna.”
― Stephen Hawking, quote from A Briefer History of Time
“Sometimes fear made you angry. Perhaps after years anger cooled, like a sword taken from a forge. Perhaps in the end you were left with something very cold and very sharp.”
― Frances Hardinge, quote from Fly by Night
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.