“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
“Before her escort could react, she sprinted out from their little pool of lantern-light into the darkness, her feet pounding the soft, treacherous clods of the field. The guards called after her for a while, but did not pursue, In a lost city, how could they chase down every lost soul who became a little more lost?”
― Frances Hardinge, quote from A Skinful of Shadows
“Remember how long you have procrastinated, and how consistently you have failed to put to good use you suspended sentence from the gods. It is about time you realized the nature of the universe (of which you are part) and of the pwoer that rules it (to which your art owes its existence). Your days are numbered. Use them to throw open the windows of your soul to the sun. If you do not, the sun will soon set, and you with it. (II.4)”
― Marcus Aurelius, quote from The Emperor's Handbook
“Suffering brings out the lowest, the most cowardly in man. There is a phase of suffering you reach beyond which you become a brute: beyond it you sell your soul—and worse, the souls of your friends—for a piece of bread, for some warmth, for a moment of oblivion, of sleep. Saints are those who die before the end of the story. The others, those who live out their destiny, no longer dare look at themselves in the mirror, afraid they may see their inner image: a monster laughing at unhappy women and at saints who are dead…”
― Elie Wiesel, quote from Day
“The keel-mounted rail gun pushed the whole ship backward in a solid mathematical relationship to the mass of the two-kilo tungsten round moving at a measurable fraction of c. Newton’s third law expressed as violence. Holden’s”
― quote from Babylon's Ashes
“Sometimes I liked him for his smile. Sometimes I liked him because he didn’t smile. Sometimes I got an erection because of the way he brushed his hair away from his face. It didn’t matter to my brain that these were odd reasons to care for someone. My brain, my body, my everything wanted to be Jeremey’s boyfriend.”
― Heidi Cullinan, quote from Carry the Ocean
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.