“It's September 21st, a day I love for the balance it carries with it.”
― Pam Houston, quote from Waltzing the Cat
“Do you write novels?" I said.
"Novels, Lord no," she said. "I can't even stay married.”
― Pam Houston, quote from Waltzing the Cat
“For the people of my country," Renato said, "water is everything: love, life, religion... even God."
"It is like that for me too," I said. "In English we call that a metaphor."
"Of course," said Renato, "and water is the most abundant metaphor on earth.”
― Pam Houston, quote from Waltzing the Cat
“The more important question, of course, was what the new Lucy would do, and even though I was pretty sure the old Lucy wouldn't be around much anymore, I was a little bit afraid the new Lucy hadn't yet shown up.”
― Pam Houston, quote from Waltzing the Cat
“If a situation requires swearing to God it is — by definition — extreme.”
― Pam Houston, quote from Waltzing the Cat
“Like sometimes when you go to a movie and you get so lost in the story that when you’re walking out of the theater you can’t remember anything at all about your own life.”
― Pam Houston, quote from Waltzing the Cat
“Find yourself a place in the universe,' she said, 'a place where the dirt feels like goodness under your feet. Take the right picture and a man will walk into it. If you can bear him even a little, then for a while let him stay.”
― Pam Houston, quote from Waltzing the Cat
“People are supposed to accumulate, I thought, as they get older, but I seem to be sloughing off, like a person wrapped in a hundred layers of cellophane, tearing one layer off at a time, trying to get down to me.”
― Pam Houston, quote from Waltzing the Cat
“You know how to steer a yacht?" Mr. McIntyre asked Ian worriedly.
"I was born knowing how to steer a yacht," Ian said. Then a stricken look came over his face. "But–do you suppose Jonah prepaid the full amount for renting this? Once my dad hears what Natalie and I did, he'll cancel our credit cards."
"You mean we're...we're poor now?" Natalie gasped.
"Penniless," Ian said grimly.
"Actually," Mr. McIntyre said, "I should have mentioned this before the others left. Grace had an addendum to her will regarding everyone who made it through the gauntlet. There were eight of you–you will all receive double the amount you turned down to get the first clue."
"It was a million dollars originally," Ian said. "So Natalie and I each get two million dollars? I suppose we could live on that."
Natalie beamed.
"That is such a relief!" she said. "Being poor wasn't quite as bad as I thought it would be, but still–"
"You were only poor for about two seconds!" Dan protested, rolling his eyes.”
― Margaret Peterson Haddix, quote from Into the Gauntlet
“How many men can say, as I must, 'I am a man whose only friend is the King of England'? I have everything, you would think. And yet take Henry away, and I have nothing.”
― Hilary Mantel, quote from Bring Up the Bodies
“How terrible it would have been, at this time, to be without it; to have died among the Tulsis, amid the squalour of that large, disintegrating and indifferent family; to have left Shama and the children among them, in one room; or worse, to have lived without even attempting to lay claim to one’s portion of the earth; to have lived and died as one had been born, unnecessary and unaccommodated.”
― V.S. Naipaul, quote from A House for Mr Biswas
“My prayers, my tears, my wishes, fears, and lamentations, were witnessed by myself and heaven alone. When we are harassed by sorrows or anxieties, or long oppressed by any powerful feelings which we must keep to ourselves, for which we can obtain and seek no sympathy from any living creature, and which yet we cannot, or will not wholly crush, we often naturally seek relief in poetry—and often find it, too—whether in the effusions of others, which seem to harmonize with our existing case, or in our own attempts to give utterance to those thoughts and feelings in strains less musical, perchance, but more appropriate, and therefore more penetrating and sympathetic, and, for the time, more soothing, or more powerful to rouse and to unburden the oppressed and swollen heart.”
― Anne Brontë, quote from Agnes Grey
“What is forgiveness worth without trust?”
― Sharon Kay Penman, quote from The Reckoning
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.
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