“So not every person fits into the little rooms we build to hold them. There are infinite combinations of human and inhuman, male and female, brown and white.”
― quote from Wake of Vultures
“She was ugly, was all they'd told her. But she didn't find them beautiful, so what did it matter?”
― quote from Wake of Vultures
“Outside of monsters, meat is meat. Science is a powerful teacher. And hunger is a cruel mistress.”
― quote from Wake of Vultures
“A creature is what it is, even if it can't show its true face.”
― quote from Wake of Vultures
“Could a mare only like mares or stallions, or could a mare like whatever she damn pleased? Maybe she just didn't know enough yet to understand what she was or what she wanted. Or maybe she was lots of things, just as her skin was a mixture of browns. Maybe she didn't have to like anything.”
― quote from Wake of Vultures
“People need to be touched and talked to, they need to know somebody else in the world cares.”
― quote from Wake of Vultures
“Nettie's one-eyed glare was flat, her patience gone. "I'm the feller that's going to kill you."
"You're not a feller."
"That's not yours to decide.”
― quote from Wake of Vultures
“People fear monsters. Monsters fear the Cannibal Owl.” Nettie”
― quote from Wake of Vultures
“Because you were raised by ignorant people. They taught you to use things before you understood them. To kill things before you recognized them. To hate things before you knew them. But you'll appreciate a thing better when you know where it comes from, when your hands know the shape of it.”
― quote from Wake of Vultures
“Being a person was mighty twisty, and yet she didn’t want to go back to being nothing.”
― quote from Wake of Vultures
“Because a shadow was a thing that defined itself, and Nettie didn't have to fit anyone else's shape.”
― quote from Wake of Vultures
“Nettie scanned the shed for anything useful, but all she saw were big, clumsy things, like hoes and plows and men.”
― quote from Wake of Vultures
“Imagine something. Something that fits in the dark. Say the dark is the sky at night. Imagine something in it.”
“A star?”
“Yes.”
“I can’t. I can’t see it.”
“Okay. Don’t try to see it. Try to be it. Would you like to know what it’s like to be one? Be a star?”
“A movie star?”
“No, a star star. In the sky. Keep your eyes closed, think about what it feels like to be one.” He moved over to her and kissed her shoulder. “Imagine yourself in that dark, all alone in the sky at night. Nobody is around you. You are by yourself, just shining there. You know how a star is supposed to twinkle? We say twinkle because that is how it looks, but when a star feels itself, it’s not a twinkle, it’s more like a throb. Star throbs. Over and over and over. Like this. Stars just throb and throb and throb and sometimes, when they can’t throb anymore, when they can’t hold it anymore, they fall out of the sky.”
― Toni Morrison, quote from Tar Baby
“What a datum! I couldn't help thinking over and over.”
― Norman Rush, quote from Mating
“The physical body is an agent of the spirit and its mirror. It is an engine and a reflection of the spirit. It is the spirit's ingenious memorandum to itself and the spirit sees itself in my body, just as I see my own face in a looking glass. My nerves reflect this. The earth is literally a mirror of thoughts. Objects themselves are embodied thoughts. Death is the dark backing that a mirror needs if we are to see anything.”
― Saul Bellow, quote from Humboldt's Gift
“Two minds with but a single thought, two hearts that beat as one.”
― Jasper Fforde, quote from First Among Sequels
“[She] knew there were women who worked successfully out of the home. They ran businesses, created empires and managed to raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted children who went on to graduate magna cum laude from Harvard or became world-renowned concert pianists. Possibly both.
These women accomplished all this while cooking gourmet meals, furnishing their homes with Italian antiques, giving clever, intelligent interviews with Money magazine and People, and maintaining a brilliant marriage with an active enviable sex life and never tipping the scale at an ounce over their ideal weight...
She knew those women were out there. If she'd had a gun, she'd have hunted every last one of them down and shot them like rabid dogs for the good of womankind.”
― Nora Roberts, quote from Birthright
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.