“But understanding a thing and accepting it are so very different things.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me
“Addie was warm and radiant next to me, making up half of us. But I - I was Eva, Eva, Eva, all the way through.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me
“I was terrified. I was eleven years old, and though I'd been told my entire life that it was entirely natural for the recessive soul to fade away, I didn't want to go. I wanted twenty thousand more sunrises, three thousand more hot summer days at the pool. I wanted to know what it was like to have a first kiss. The other recessives were lucky to have disappeared at four or five. They knew less.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me
“If you're there, Eva...if you're really there..." His fingers tightened around our shoulder, digging into our skin. "I love you, too. Always"
Then he pushed us away.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me
“One second. A snapshot of fear and sweat and blood.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me
“I was caged in our body and caged in his arms and, somehow, the former was the real prison.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me
“(Addie) I said. (If it had been you - if it were you trapped inside. If you were the one who couldn't move, I'd go back. I'd go back in a second.)”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me
“The silence was like an unwelcome child, pulling at our hair, running its fingers over our lips.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me
“There's only so long you can be at the zoo before it gets old.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me
“For years, we'd been the thorn of the neighborhood, the dirty little secret that wasn't so secret. The girls who just wouldn't settle.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me
“We'd been born with our souls' fingers interlocked. What if we'd never let go?”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me
“I focused as hard as I could on our fingers. On curling them. On bending our elbows to prop up our body.”
― Kat Zhang, quote from What's Left of Me
“There can be no relation more strange, more critical, than that between two beings who know each other only with their eyes, who meet daily, yes, even hourly, eye each other with a fixed regard, and yet by some whim or freak of convention feel constrained to act like strangers. Uneasiness rules between them, unslaked curiosity, a hysterical desire to give rein to their suppressed impulse to recognize and address each other; even, actually, a sort of strained but mutual regard. For one human being instinctively feels respect and love for another human being so long as he does not know him well enough to judge him; and that he does not, the craving he feels is evidence.”
― Thomas Mann, quote from Death in Venice and Other Tales
“It is also then that I wish I believed in some sort of life after life, that in another universe, maybe on a small red planet where we have not legs but tails, where we paddle through the atmosphere like seals, where the air itself is sustenance, composed of trillions of molecules of protein and sugar and all one has to do is open one's mouth and inhale in order to remain alive and healthy, maybe you two are there together, floating through the climate. Or maybe he is closer still: maybe he is that gray cat that has begun to sit outside our neighbor's house, purring when I reach out my hand to it; maybe he is that new puppy I see tugging at the end of my other neighbor's leash; maybe he is that toddler I saw running through the square a few months ago, shrieking with joy, his parents huffing after him; maybe he is that flower that suddenly bloomed on the rhododendron bush I thought had died long ago; maybe he is that cloud, that wave, that rain, that mist. It isn't only that he died, or how he died; it is what he died believing. And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, quote from A Little Life
“I will not pretend I wasn't petrified. I was. But mixed in with the awful fear was a glorious feeling of excitement. Most of the really exciting things we do in our lives scare us to death. They wouldn't be exciting if they didn't.”
― Roald Dahl, quote from Danny the Champion of the World
“Bye Caspian!' I called out. He stopped, and threw me a big grin over his shoulder. I grinned back like the Cheshire cat. What was it about him that made me feel so ridiculously happy?”
― Jessica Verday, quote from The Hollow
“Every ruler should strive for his people to love him. But if they cannot love you, then make them fear you. Love is better, but fear will do the job.”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from Narcissus in Chains
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.