“But the bigots always see those whom they hate as morally corrupt, as if they confuse their own aesthetics of disgust and fear with actual ethical critique, rationalizing their emotional response, and enforcing their moral certainties with passion, establishing them-selves, subtly or brutally, as arbiters of reason.”
― Hal Duncan, quote from Vellum
“In that time while he was still aware, which was the worse, I wonder: the agony of his physical torture or the horror of their utter hatred, of their moral certainty that he was so beyond the bounds of what they could accept that he deserved not just a death but one of such brutality, such inhumanity, as would make the seraphs who burned Sodom bow their heads in cold respect? What is it like, I wonder, to learn the full capacity of hatred in a lesson hammered home with bone broken on wood and skin ripped on barbed wire?”
― Hal Duncan, quote from Vellum
“She has to be written out of history and written into myth.”
― Hal Duncan, quote from Vellum
“A burning map. Every epic, my friend Jack used to say, should start with a burning map. Like in the movies. Fucking flames burning the world away; that's the best thing about all those old movies, he said - when you see this old parchment map just… getting darker and darker in the centre, crisping, crinkling until suddenly it just… fwoom”
― Hal Duncan, quote from Vellum
“Come Neti, my chief keeper of the gates of Kur, and listen carefully to what I say: Lock up and bolt the seven gates of Kur, then, one by one, open each gate and let Innana enter through the crack. Bring her down. But as she enters, take her regal costume from her, take the crown, the necklace, and the beads that fall across her breast, the golden breastplate on her chest, the bracelet and the rod and line. Strip her of everything, even the royal robe, and let the holy priestess of the earth, the queen of heaven, enter here bowed low.”
― Hal Duncan, quote from Vellum
“- Come Inanna, enter, Neti said to her, and as Inanna entered the first gate, the sugurra, crown of the steppe, was taken from her head.
- What is this? asked Inanna
- Quiet, Inanna, she was told. The customs of the city of the dead are perfect. They may not be questioned.”
― Hal Duncan, quote from Vellum
“Either dragons should exist completely or fail to exist at all, he felt. A dragon only half-existing was worse than the extremes.”
― Terry Pratchett, quote from The Color of Magic
“Renton looks at her and sees her pain and anger. It cuts him
up. It confuses him. Kelly has a great sense of humour. What's wrong with her? The knee–jerk
thought: Wrong time of the' month is forming in his head when he looks about and picks up the
intonations of the laughter around the bar. It's not funny laughter.
This is lynch mob laughter.
How was ah tae know, he thinks. How the fuck was ah tae know?”
― Irvine Welsh, quote from Trainspotting
“All men make mistakes, but a good man yields when he knows his course is wrong, and repairs the evil. The only crime is pride.”
― Sophocles, quote from Antigone
“Onward, then! To glory and some such nonsense.”
― Brandon Sanderson, quote from Words of Radiance
“She needed to recover. His father had died in January; it was only the end of May. They needed to stick to the routine they'd established during the intervening months. in that way, their life would return to its original shape, like a spring stretched in bad times but contracting eventually into happiness. That the world could come permanently unsprung had never occurred to him.”
― David Wroblewski, quote from The Story of Edgar Sawtelle
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.