Quotes from Unteachable

“...You should love something while you have it, love it fully and without reservation, even if you know you'll lose it someday. We lose everything. If you're trying to avoid loss, there's no point in taking another breath, or letting your heart beat one more time. It all ends." His fingers curl around mine. "That's all life is. Breathing in, breathing out. The space between two breaths.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“You can call it love, or you can call it freefall. They're pretty much the same thing.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“There are moments, when you’re getting to know someone, when you realize something deep and buried in you is deep and buried in them, too. It feels like meeting a stranger you’ve known your whole life.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“Who fixes broken people? Is it only other broken people, ones who've already been ruined? And do we need to be fixed? It was the messiness and hurt in our pasts that drove us, and that same hurt connected us at a subdermal level, the kind of scars written so deeply in your cells that you can't even see them anymore, only recognize them in someone else.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“I see the lights every night. It seems like the whole world has figured out how to be happy, but no one's letting me in on the secret.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“I respect people who get nerdy as fuck about something they love”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“Part of falling in love with someone is actually falling in love with yourself. Realizing that you're gorgeous, you're fearless and unpredictable, you're a firecracker spitting light, entrancing a hundred faces that stare up at you with starry eyes.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“I can't hold on to you. You're like a shooting star. Just a trail of fire in my hands.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“That's another thing about lies: if you convince yourself they're true, they become true. A lie is a discrepancy of belief, not fact.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“There's something so terrible about wanting something you've already had. You know exactly what you're missing. Your body knows precisely how to shape itself around the ache, the hollowness that wants to be filled”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“That is all life is. Breathing in, breathing out. The space between two breaths.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“People know their feelings much sooner than they consciously accept them.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“The only way to cure an obsession is to become obsessed with something else.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“...The thought of how much happiness lay scattered across the universe, unrealized, in fragments, waiting for the right twist of fate to bring it together.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“Grow up. This is real. The world is ugly and nasty and fucked up, and so are we.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul and all that jazz.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“Why did everything beautiful come from pain?”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“You should love something while you have it, love it fully and without reservation, even if you know you’ll lose it someday.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“Are you in love with him?”
I rolled my head on the plank to look at Wesley.
“I don’t think I know what being in love is yet. But this is different than anything I’ve ever felt.”
“What’s it feel like?”
“Remember when you thought I was jumping off to kill myself?”
He winced.
“It’s like that,” I said.
“But no one catches you. You’re just hanging over infinity.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“This is ridiculous," I said, trying to laugh it off. "I never cry at movies."

"Because you've never been in love," he said.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“Don’t come here to fuck with my head and play games. You don’t test someone’s love by leaving them.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“Thanks, Dad, for leaving a huge void in my life that Freud says has to be filled with dick.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“The brain is an incredible multitasker. At the same time that it’s piercing itself with superheated needles of anguish, it’s ruthlessly making plans, contingencies, plotting out a future, giving zero fucks whether it’ll ever see it. On the day I die, it’ll be calculating what to have for dinner as it bombards itself with pain signals from my amputated legs or my clocked-out heart.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“I'm not over you. I dream about you every night. I watch that fucking video over and over just to hear your voice. Does that make you happy? Is that proof I cared?”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“I can’t be your manic pixie dream girl. I can’t be the girl who teaches you how to open your heart and embrace life and all that bullshit, because I’m trying to figure out how to do that myself. I need a manic pixie dream boy of my own.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“Nobody knows how to be a grown-up. We're all just pretending for each other.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“That’s how you know someone loves you. When they want you to be happy even in the part of your life they’ll never see. But right then I was too stuck in the moment, in the visceral pleasure of it all.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“You're so alive, Maise. You're so here, so present in the moment. You've taught me that happiness is possible now, not in some distant future. You'll scale a mountain without a second thought, face your fears, throw yourself into danger, and you're not reckless but bold, proud. You have a lion's heart. You're not afraid to live.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“Our gazes struck like flint and steel. And I realized that gunsmoke smell wasn’t ozone. It was us. We burned.”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

“That was what we'd finally been forced to confront: if our relationship was based on forbiddenness, what would happen when it was no longer forbidden?”
― Elliot Wake, quote from Unteachable

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Popular quotes

“And a Fool is supposed to be wise?”
― Robin Hobb, quote from Fool's Errand

“For a long time, I did not move from the dark, wood-panelled hall. I wanted company, and I had none, lights and warmth and a strong drink inside me, I needed reassurance. But, more than anything else, I needed an explanation. It is remarkable how powerful a force simple curiosity can be. I had never realized that before now. In spite of my intense fear and sense of shock, I was consumed with the desire to find out exactly who it was that I had seen, and how, I could not rest until I had settled the business, for all that, while out there, I had not dared to stay and make any investigations.”
― Susan Hill, quote from The Woman in Black

“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”
― Charles Bukowski, quote from Factotum

“Deciding whether or not to trust a person is like deciding whether or not to climb a tree because you might get a wonderful view from the highest branch or you might simply get covered in sap and for this reason many people choose to spend their time alone and indoors where it is harder to get a splinter.”
― Lemony Snicket, quote from The Penultimate Peril

“In this also we are men, that we think of the dead. Once it was not so, and when one of us died, he lay where he lay by the cave-mouth and we ran in and out there, not standing quite upright as we ran. Now we stand upright, and now also we think of the dead.

So, when the comrade lies there, we do not let him lie where he died. And we do not take him by the legs carelessly, and drag him into the forest for the foxes and woodrats to gnaw on. We do not cast him into the river carelessly for the stream to float him away.

No, but rather we lay him where the ground is hollowed out a little and there cover him with leaves and branches. So he shall return to the earth, whence all things came.

Or else we lay him to rest among the tree-branches, and give him to the air. Then, if the black birds come streaming from far to pluck at him, that too is right, for they are the creatures of the air.

Or else we give him to the bright and hot cleanliness of fire.

Then we go about our life as before, and soon we forget, like the beasts. But this at least we have done, and when we shall no longer do it, then we shall no longer be men.”
― George R. Stewart, quote from Earth Abides

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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.