“We are like water, aren’t we? We can be fluid, flexible when we have to be. But strong and destructive, too.” And something else, I think to myself. Like water, we mostly follow the path of least resistance.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“Maybe that's what love is. Having someone who guides you through different experiences, coaxes you to try news things but still makes you feel safe.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“a life we didn't choose, chose us”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“One thing I’ve learned in my program is that guilt is a wasted emotion, you know? Look back on the past but don’t stare.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“A life I didn't choose chose me.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“So maybe that’s what love means. Having the capacity to forgive the one who wronged you, no matter how deep the hurt was.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“That’s often the case, of course—that creation and madness begin to dance with each other.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“The “what-ifs”: they’ll do a number on you.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“Il destino mischia le carte, ma siamo noi a giocare la partita. Destiny shuffles the cards, but we are the ones who must play the game.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“Sometimes we want something to be true so badly that we convince ourselves that it is true.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“All I’m saying, Dad, is that I accept that I don’t know. But I have faith that my Lord and Savior does, so I’m putting myself in His hands. Humbling myself to a wisdom that’s above and beyond me and praying for His guidance.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable:”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“So maybe that’s what love means. Having the capacity to forgive the one who wronged you, no matter how deep the hurt was. At any rate, I’m glad she doesn’t know about the corpse that’s down there in that well. I’ve spared her that much.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“That coincidence is God’s way of staying invisible?”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“It’s as if the work on your canvas has a will of its own. When that happens, it can be quite exciting. But disturbing, too, when, as the painter, you are not in control of your painting.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“Of course, all of the coolest icons overdosed and died years ago, which is just as well. How depressing would it be to see a gray-haired Jimi Hendrix wearing a cardigan sweater and reminiscing about the soundtrack of the Summer of Love?”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“Change what you can, accept what you can't, and be smart enough to know the difference.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“This is where the pot is strongest now: at the place where it had been broken.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“Change what you can, accept what you can’t, and be smart enough to know the difference. Viveca comes downstairs first and heads into the”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“This was a career, not an emotional disorder.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“Motherless children have a hard time when the mother is gone. That”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“Motherless children have a hard time when the mother is gone.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“and yet she continues to skip rope in my mind and on my canvases, raising her dark, hopeful face to the sky, innocent of the depth of people’s cruelty toward “the other”—those who, for whatever reason, must swim against the tide instead of letting it carry them. . . .”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“It lands halfway down the skirt. The red wine against the green silk makes it look like Gaia, the primordial earth mother, is having her period. I know I should feel guilty. Contrite. I should be rushing to the fridge and grabbing a bottle of club soda before the stain sets, or rushing Viveca’s dress down the street to that dry cleaning place. But I’m not contrite. I’m a little giddy, in fact. I pour another mug of wine and throw it at the other three dresses. In some places the wine seeps in and it dribbles down to the hems in others. I do it again: pour, splash. I feel like Jackson Pollock must have felt, except I’m not dribbling paint; I’m staining beauty with blood.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“I understand there was some controversy about the coroner’s ruling concerning Josephus Jones’s”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“Too bad I didn't know you back then, I would have come and rescued you." Like he was Prince Charming or something. Which he is, in a way, because he rescued me from the simple, uncomplicated life I thought I liked until I realized how much I was missing. How lonely that life had been: going to work, going home, and watching TV, going places by myself on weekends.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“If you want people to flock to art, lure them with pancakes.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“Maybe that’s what love is. Having someone who guides you through different experiences, coaxes you to try new things but still makes you feel safe.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“When a painting I’m working on becomes my singular focus—when I am “in the zone,” as I’ve heard people put it—a trancelike state will sometimes overtake me.”
― Wally Lamb, quote from We Are Water
“The ‘tail’ of a comet, by the way, is a train of dust, but it is not streaming out behind the head of the comet as we might think. Instead, it is ‘blown’ by a stream of particles coming from the sun, which we call the solar wind. So the tail of the comet always points away from the sun, no matter which way the comet is travelling. There’s an exciting proposal, once confined to science fiction stories but now being implemented by Japanese space engineers, to use the solar wind to propel spacecraft equipped with gigantic ‘sails’. Like sailing yachts on the sea using real wind, solar wind space-yachts would theoretically provide a very economical way to travel to distant worlds.”
― Richard Dawkins, quote from The Magic of Reality: How We Know What's Really True
“I guess in the end, it doesn’t matter what we wanted. What matters is what we chose to do with the things we had.”
― Mira Grant, quote from Deadline
“They do not disappear when they die. They leave us their strength.”
― Heidi R. Kling, quote from Sea
“It's all now you see. Yesterday won't be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago; or to anyone who ever sailed a skiff under a quilt sail, the moment in 1492 when somebody thought This is it: the absolute edge of no return, to turn back now and make home or sail irrevocably on and either find land or plunge over the world's roaring rim.”
― William Faulkner, quote from Intruder in the Dust
“When Rose takes to screaming, she starts loud, continues loud, and ends loud. Rose has a very good ear and always screams on the same note. I'd tested her before I burnt the library, and our piano along with it.
Rose screams on the note B flat.
We don't need a piano anymore now that we have a human tuning fork.”
― Franny Billingsley, quote from Chime
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.