“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
“Dementia. Ruth puzzled over the diagnosis: How could such a beautiful-sounding word apply to such a destructive disease? It was a name befitting a goddess: Dementia, who caused her sister Demeter to forget to turn winter into spring.”
― Amy Tan, quote from The Bonesetter's Daughter
“That this girl would know exactly how to shatter me.”
― Tahereh Mafi, quote from Destroy Me
“My child, I know you're not a child
But I still see you running wild
Between those flowering trees.
Your sparkling dreams, your silver laugh
Your wishes to the stars above
Are just my memories.
And in your eyes the ocean
And in your eyes the sea
The waters frozen over
With your longing to be free.
Yesterday you'd awoken
To a world incredibly old.
This is the age you are broken
Or turned into gold.
You had to kill this child, I know.
To break the arrows and the bow
To shed your skin and change.
The trees are flowering no more
There's blood upon the tiles floor
This place is dark and strange.
I see you standing in the storm
Holding the curse of youth
Each of you with your story
Each of you with your truth.
Some words will never be spoken
Some stories will never be told.
This is the age you are broken
Or turned into gold.
I didn't say the world was good.
I hoped by now you understood
Why I could never lie.
I didn't promise you a thing.
Don't ask my wintervoice for spring
Just spread your wings and fly.
Though in the hidden garden
Down by the green green lane
The plant of love grows next to
The tree of hate and pain.
So take my tears as a token.
They'll keep you warm in the cold.
This is the age you are broken
Or turned into gold.
You've lived too long among us
To leave without a trace
You've lived too short to understand
A thing about this place.
Some of you just sit there smoking
And some are already sold.
This is the age you are broken
Or turned into gold.
This is the age you are broken or turned into gold.”
― Antonia Michaelis, quote from The Storyteller
“When someone you loved was depending on your lie, it was perfectly easy.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from Big Little Lies
“She just smiled, said that she loved books more than anything, and started telling him excitedly what each of the ones in her lap was about. And Ove realised that he wanted to hear her talking about the things she loved for the rest of his life.”
― Fredrik Backman, quote from A Man Called Ove
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.