Quotes from Want Not

Jonathan Miles ·  403 pages

Rating: (2.6K votes)


“This is our condition . We do not solve problems. We replace them with other problems.”
― Jonathan Miles, quote from Want Not


“…wondering, not for the first time, if there was a kind of dark bliss built into dementia: an immunity from death and abandonment, a way of fixing a point in time so that nothing can change, nothing can be rewritten, no one can leave.”
― Jonathan Miles, quote from Want Not


“But now . . . he was not yet at the age, like his father, when life shifts to past tense, when what is becomes what was and all the other verbs defining your existence go slumping into the preterite, crusted with apophonic alternations (I sing calcifying into I sang), and you can do nothing but marvel or wince at the irredeemable, irreversible arc of it—not yet. On this November night he was fifty-four years old. By no means, he told himself, was he beyond the future tense. But he could feel the past tense gaining on him, like the cold seeping into his back and dusting his face. He licked it off his lips and stood up. He had work to do.”
― Jonathan Miles, quote from Want Not


“But then he decided it wasn’t an irony, it was merely the broken gears of time, or the way life can feed you when you’re full (youth) and starve you when you’re hungry (midlife).”
― Jonathan Miles, quote from Want Not


“Alexis was at that age, seventeen, when mothers come into view as tyrants or imbeciles or both.”
― Jonathan Miles, quote from Want Not



“This is our condition. We do not solve problems. We replace them with other problems.”
― Jonathan Miles, quote from Want Not


About the author

Jonathan Miles
Born place: The United States
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“That to truly know happiness is to know the fleeting nature of everything, joy, pain, safety and happiness itself.”
― Miriam Toews, quote from Irma Voth


“All that evening he talked to the Candle of Arras, in a low confidential tone. When you get down to it, he thought, there's not much difference between politics and sex; it's all about
power. He didn't suppose he was the first person in the world to make this observation. It's a question of seduction, and how fast and cheap you can effect it: if Camille, he thought, approximates to one of those little milliners who can't make ends meet - in other words, an absolute pushover - then Robespierre is a Carmelite, mind set on becoming Mother Superior. You can't corrupt her; you can wave your cock under her nose, and she's neither shocked nor interested: why should she be, when she hasn't the remotest idea
what it's for?”
― Hilary Mantel, quote from A Place of Greater Safety


“I journeyed to a place where it's always raining cupcakes. I didn't need a passport, but I met a lot of interesting people and experienced new things. Even though the trip was a little bumpy, I got there just fine.”
― Lisa Schroeder, quote from It's Raining Cupcakes


“But this feeling had come, that day, and swallowed everything up inside it, so big you couldn’t really prove it was there except by an arithmetic of absence and the memory of better days.”
― William Gibson, quote from Virtual Light


“I said nothing. I’m good at saying nothing. I don’t like talking. I could go the rest of my life without saying another word, if I had to.”
― Lee Child, quote from The Affair


Interesting books

The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas
(361.6K)
The Boy in the Strip...
by John Boyne
Daphnis and Chloe
(2.1K)
The Good Samaritan
(9K)
The Good Samaritan
by John Marrs
Napalm & Silly Putty
(13.9K)
Napalm & Silly Putty
by George Carlin
The Boyfriend League
(8.3K)
The Boyfriend League
by Rachel Hawthorne
Tibetan Book of the Dead
(3.8K)
Tibetan Book of the...
by Padmasambhava

About BookQuoters

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.