Quotes from Typical American

“A man was the sum of his limits; freedom only made him see how much so.”
― Gish Jen, quote from Typical American

“One left; things shifted in one's absence; one returned to something else. Time frustrated all. There was no sneaking past its rough guard, even to get to one's own yard of intimacies.”
― Gish Jen, quote from Typical American

“Anything is possible. A man is what he makes up his mind to be.”
― Gish Jen, quote from Typical American

“He was like a nation in crisis, looking back, and back and back — its history might be ugly, but its past shone perfect.”
― Gish Jen, quote from Typical American

“Of course he bothers me. He's my husband.”
― Gish Jen, quote from Typical American

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Popular quotes

“People can't anticipate how much they'll miss the natural world until they are deprived of it. I have read about submarine crewmen who haunt the sonar room, listening to whale songs and colonies of snapping shrimp. Submarine captains dispense 'periscope liberty'- a chance to gaze at clouds and birds and coastlines and remind themselves that the natural world still exists. I once met a man who told me that after landing in Christchurch, New Zealand, after a winter at the South Pole research station, he and his companions spent a couple days just wandering around staring in awe at flowers and trees. At one point, one of them spotted a woman pushing a stroller. 'A baby!' he shouted, and they all rushed across the street to see. The woman turned the stroller and ran.”
― Mary Roach, quote from Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void

“As the geometer intently seeks
to square the circle, but he cannot reach, through thought on thought, the principle he needs, so I searched that strange sight.”
― Dante Alighieri, quote from La Divina Comedia

“The arrow is off the string but does not fly straight to the target, nor does the target stand where it is. Calculation, which is miscalculation, sets in….”
― W. Timothy Gallwey, quote from The Inner Game of Tennis: The Classic Guide to the Mental Side of Peak Performance

“With practice, you began to recognize entire words by themselves. C-A-T became simply cat, thanks to a mental representation that encoded the pattern of the letters in that word and associated that pattern with both the sound of the word and the idea of a small, furry animal that meows and often doesn’t get along well with dogs. Along”
― K. Anders Ericsson, quote from Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise

“I wouldn’t call them unfinished,” Sabre said. “More like… brilliance on hold.”
― Lucian Bane, quote from Seven Sons of Zion

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About BookQuoters

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.