“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
“said softly, framing his son’s face”
― Marie Force, quote from Maid for Love
“With languages, you can move from one social situation to another. With languages, you are at home anywhere.”
― Edmund de Waal, quote from The Hare With Amber Eyes: A Family's Century of Art and Loss
“Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. He said, “Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the whole staircase, just take the first step.”
― Laura Schroff, quote from An Invisible Thread: The True Story of an 11-Year-Old Panhandler, a Busy Sales Executive, and an Unlikely Meeting with Destiny
“Please, don't leave me. Don't make me empty again. Don't let me break.
-Gage”
― Shanora Williams, quote from Who He Is
“The system can be paralyzed in yet another way. Every feedback system needs a margin of “lag” or error. If we try to make a thermostat absolutely accurate–that is, if we bring the upper and lower limits of temperature very close together in an attempt to hold the temperature at a constant 70 degrees–the whole system will break down. For to the extent that the upper and lower limits coincide, the signals for switching off and switching on will coincide! If 70 degrees is both the lower and upper limit the “go” sign will also be the “stop” sign; “yes” will imply “no” and “no” will imply “yes.” Whereupon the mechanism will start “trembling,” going on and off, on and off, until it shakes itself to pieces. The system is too sensitive and shows symptoms which are startlingly like human anxiety. For when a human being is so self-conscious, so self-controlled that he cannot let go of himself, he dithers or wobbles between opposites. This is precisely what is meant in Zen by going round and round on “the wheel of birth-and-death,” for the Buddhist samsara is the prototype of all vicious circles. We saw that when the furnace responds too closely to the thermostat, it cannot go ahead without also trying to stop, or stop without also trying to go ahead. This is just what happens to the human being, to the mind, when the desire for certainty and security prompts identification between the mind and its own image of itself. It cannot let go of itself. It feels that it should not do what it is doing, and that it should do what it is not doing. It feels that it should not be what it is, and be what it isn’t. Furthermore, the effort to remain always “good” or “happy” is like trying to hold the thermostat to a constant 70 degrees by making the lower limit the same as the upper.”
― Alan W. Watts, quote from The Way of Zen
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.