“No one can know sincere happiness, Sophie, without first having known sorrow. One can never appreciate the enormity and rareness of such a fiery bliss without seeing misery, however unfair that may be.”
“The shortest distance between two points is the line from me to you.”
“Fear, Sadness. They're not weaknesses. They are overpowering, defining emotions. They make you human, Sophie.”
“Tell him he was my greatest adventure. Tell him I love him.”
“The truth is, I'm so deep in love with you, I can't see straight. The truth is, I've been afraid to admit it to myself, let alone you. The truth is, I'm terrified.”
“I was not staring at you,” he told his plate.
I leaned over. “Did you hear that, Dingane’s lunch? He was not staring at you.”
He looked up at me crossly. “I was not staring at you.”
“I never said you were.”
“I was merely explaining that Henry was exaggerating. I did not stare at you.”
“Okay,” I stated, implying in my tone that he had done just that.
“I didn’t. I-I wasn’t.”
“I believe you,” I told him
“I may have looked at you a few times to make sure you were doing your job.”
“Oh, I see then.”
“But I certainly wasn’t staring.”
“We’ve established that you were not staring.”
He breathed deeply a few times, his eyes burning into mine. “Good.”
He’d definitely been staring.”
“And what is there to be joyful about?" I asked honestly, thinking on the images of dead children curled into themselves at the village. Another burst of silent tears streamed down.
"Life, Sophie. They still live. They breathe, they love each other, they find joy in the world around them for no other reason than because they are children. They are resilient. They will always rise above. Always. It is a curious facet of the innocent young.”
“If we don’t make out of this alive, Sophie Price, I want you to know that I’ve never loved anyone as much as I love you. You’re it for me.”
“Vanity's a debilitating affliction. You’re so absorbed in yourself it’s impossible to love anyone other than oneself, leaving you weak without realization of it. It’s quite sad. You’ve no idea what you’re missing either. You will never know real love and your life will pas you by.”
“You are so gosh damn beautiful in here," he said, tapping my chest, "that what's here," he spoke, running the side of his hand down my face, "is magnified tenfold and that is a sight to be hold.”
“Their innocence is addicting, their hope is catching and I'm happy to be surrounded by them.”
“It’s the favorite part of my day.”
My eyes opened lazily. “What do you mean?” I whispered.
“When you undo them and run your hands throughout the waves. That’s my favorite part of the day.”
“You may have misery," she continued, ignoring my plea, "you may lose hope in the sorrow of an unplanned life but as long as you have faith and trust in adoration, in affection, in love, that sorrow will turn to happiness. And that is a constant, dear.”
“No need to flatter me, Miss Price. I believe your bait worked. I’m hooked. Line and sinker.”
“I wasn't crying for myself. I was crying for the innocents.”
“My god, he’s the one who gets the girls? What? Is he made of chocolate or something?”
“You've arrested my senses and I can't seem to get enough of you. That's what scares me. I'm so deep there's no getting out for me. You own me, you know?”
“Your heart is startingly beautiful, Sophie." - Ian”
“It was like my body knew instantly that he was mine and that I was his.”
“Note to self, Ian is happiest when in dangerous situations.”
“Men wanted me. They all did, however briefly, but none of them wanted to keep me. That's what I needed. I needed to be owned, loved. BUT NOT BY A MAN. I knew then that I never needed to be kept by a man. What I needed was to love myself, to want to keep myself around. And in that revelation, I knew that if I wanted to keep myself, that a man wanting to keep me would just be a by-product.”
“Fascinating,” I said, turning toward Ian. “You never told me Simon went to Oxford.”
“Simon went to Oxford, Sophie.”
“That girl was the real me. Frightened. Worthless. A terrible friend. Terrible daughter. Well educated but so limited in ideas worth having. Beautiful yet repulsive…
And finally honest.”
“Prepare yourself, Price, ‘cause I’m about to rock your world.”
“P.S. I'm going to throw an absolutely mind-blowing fact your way. I'm not kidding, either. The country of Uganda is obsessed with Celine Dion. They dedicate entire days to broadcasting her music. They love her that much. Five words. My. Heart. Will. Go. On. Yeah.”
“But they have life and faith and hope and love and they choose those things. Their innocence is addicting, their hope is catching and I'm happy to be surrounded by them”
“Stay with me”
…
“I don’t have a choice,” I told him.
“You do. Choose me, Soph.”
“I’d been kissed before, many times, but never like that.”
“One day you will blink and the haze will dissipate. You'�ll discover that what once defined you has wilted
into graying hair and wrinkled skin. Frantic, you�ll glance around yourself, in hopes of finding those you
swore adored you, but all you will find is empty picture frames.”
“I wasn’t different from most girls I knew. Well, except the fact I was exponentially better looking, but why beat a dead horse?”
“I think you have a right to whine. Honestly, Lucy. We all have the right to whine when life gets tough.”
“A dark-windowed diesel train burst out of the building, close enough to make the bus shake. It helter-skeltered downward into the earth. “Where’s it going?” Zanna said. “Crossing the Odd, to some of the other abcities,” Jones said. “If you’re brave enough to try, you might be able to catch a train from UnLondon to Parisn’t, or No York, or Helsunki, or Lost Angeles, or Sans Francisco, or Hong Gone, or Romeless…It’s a terminus.”
“Det som förblir oförändrat för länge förstör sig själv. Skogen är evig därför att den dör och dör och därför lever." (s. 319)”
“You can tell whether some misogynistic societal pressure is being exerted on women by calmly enquiring, ‘And are the men doing this, as well?’ If they aren’t, chances are you’re dealing with what we strident feminists refer to as ‘some total fucking bullshit’.”
“It’s a common observation that all science fiction novels say as much about the time of their composition as they do about the future. As they wrote Hard to Be a God, the Strugatsky brothers were working under considerable political pressure. Following Khrushchev’s infamous visit to an exhibition of abstract art in 1962 (“dog shit” was one of his more printable responses) a wave of panicked ideological house-cleaning swept through the Soviet Union’s artistic establishment. For SF writers, as Boris Strugatsky remembers, this resulted in a reminder that the only truly orthodox subject was “the collision of two worlds.”
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.