“How we remember changes how we have lived.
Time runs both ways. We make stories of our lives.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
“The world could bring you poison in a jewelled cup, or surprising gifts. Sometimes you didn't know which of them it was.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
“Full moon is falling through the sky.
Cranes fly through clouds.
Wolves howl. I cannot find rest
Because I am powerless
To amend a broken world.
Sima Zian added, "I love the man who wrote that, I told you before, but there is so much burden in Chan Du. Duty, assuming all tasks, can betray arrogance. The idea we can know what must be done, and do it properly. We cannot know the future, my friend. It claims so much to imagine we can. And the world is not broken any more than it always, always is.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
“Branching paths. The turning of days and seasons and years. Life offered you love sometimes, sorrow often. If you were very fortunate, true friendship. Sometimes war came.
You did what you could to shape your own peace, before you crossed over to the night and left the world behind, as all men did, to be forgotten or remembered, as time or love allowed.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
“Truth" when examining events and records of the past was always precarious, uncertain. No man could say for certain how the river of time would have flowed, cresting or receding, bringing floods or gently watering fields, had a single event, or even many, unfolded differently.
It is in the nature of existence under heaven, the dissenting scholars wrote, that we cannot know these things with clarity. We cannot live twice, or watch as moments of the past unfurl, like a courtesan's silk fan. The river flows, the dancers finish their dance. If the music starts again it is starting anew, not repeating itself.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
“There was some sadness in how that could happen, Tai thought: falling out of love with something that had shaped you. Or even people who had? But if you didn't change at least a little, where were the passages of a life? Didn't learning, changing, sometimes mean letting go of what had once been seen as true?”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
“I love the way folktale and fantasy tap into the roots of story telling. The paradox, for me, is that by moving a story into the fantastic we can actually bring it closer to the reader, not move it further away. It is more than an escape. When we read of the only daughter of a fisherman (or the third son of a woodcutter) in a fairy tale, we are all that character. That's the underlying pulse beat of such tales. Using the fantastic as a prism for the past, if done properly, removes the tale from distancing specificity. It can't just be read as unique to a time and place; it is universalized in interesting, powerful ways. When I wrote Tigana, about the way tyranny tries to erase identity in conquered peoples, the fantasy setting seems to have done exactly that: I'm asked in places ranging from Korea to Poland to Croatia to Quebec, "Were you writing about us?"
I was. All of them. That is the point. The fantastic is a tool in the writer's arsenal, as potentially powerful as any there is, and any tool we have works to the benefit of the reader.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
“I didn't ask to be made a princess."
This time all three of them laugh, although it is gentle enough.
"Who chooses their fate?" It is the third one, the tallest. "Who asks to be born into the times that are theirs?"
"Well, who accepts the world only as it comes to them?" she says, too quickly.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
“The world could bring you poison in a jewelled cup, or surprising gifts. Sometimes you didn’t know which of them it was.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
“And it is always difficult, even with the best will in the world, to look back a long way and see anything resembling the truth.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
“Full moon is falling through the sky. Cranes fly through clouds. Wolves howl. I cannot find rest Because I am powerless To amend a broken world.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
“We cannot know the future, my friend. It claims so much to imagine we can. And the world is not broken any more than it always, always is.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
“Here the world is all the world may be”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
“There was a new hole in the world where sorrow could enter.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
“One of the pleasures of dealing with intelligent men, Lin Fong decided, watching seven people ride out the eastern gate in early-morning sunlight, was how much did not have to be spoken.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
“I want to kill someone," Tai said.
A pause to consider this. "I am familiar with the desire. It is sometimes effective. Not invariably.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
“Men changed during wars or conflict, sometimes beyond recognition. Tai”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
“The world is not something to be understood. It is vanity, illusion to even try.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
“He’d stopped permitting himself to be unhappy about it.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, quote from Under Heaven
Guy Gavriel Kay
Born place: in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, Canada
See more on GoodReads
“We do not know, we do not know. We shall live from day to day, and put more locks on the doors, and get a fine fierce dog when the fine fierce bitch next door has pups, and hold on to our handbags more tenaciously; and the beauty of the trees by night, and the raptures of lovers under the stars, these things we shall forego. We shall forego the coming home drunken through the midnight streets, and the evening walk over the star-lit veld. We shall be careful, and knock this off our lives, and knock that off our lives, and hedge ourselves about with safety and precaution. And our lives will shrink, but they shall be the lives of superior beings; and we shall live with fear, but at least it will not be a fear of the unknown. And the conscience shall be thrust down; the light of life shall not be extinguished, but be put under a bushel, to be preserved for a generation that will live by it again, in some day not yet come; and how it will come, and when it will come, we shall not think about at all.”
― Alan Paton, quote from Cry, the Beloved Country
“I would kill for a cheeseburger. Honestly. If I stumbled across someone eating a cheeseburger, I would kill them for it.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The 5th Wave
“We are all susceptible to the pull of viral ideas. Like mass hysteria. Or a tune that gets into your head that you keep humming all day until you spread it to someone else. Jokes. Urban legends. Crackpot religions. Marxism. No matter how smart we get, there is always this deep irrational part that makes us potential hosts for self-replicating information.”
― Neal Stephenson, quote from Snow Crash
“Don't talk to the crazy kids. I longed to shout back that we weren't crazy. I'd mistaken her kid for a ghost, that's all.
I wondered whether they had books about his sort of thing. Fifty Ways to Tell the Living from the Dead Before You Wind Up in a Padded Room. Yep, I'm sure the library carried that one.”
― Kelley Armstrong, quote from The Summoning
“You can't blame anyone else, ... , no one but yourself. You have to make your own choices and live every agonizing day with the consequences of those choices.”
― Max Brooks, quote from World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War
Norwegian Wood
Fifty Shades Darker
Kafka on the Shore
Fried Green Tomatoes...
Bridget Jones's Diar...
Franny and ZooeyBookQuoters 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.
