“I looked at myself in the mirror. I looked awful, but I always look awful in the mirror. I keep myself going with the firm belief that my real face is much better looking.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“if I examine myself closely enough, I find hints of every objectionable quality known to man.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“Drugs are your friends, treat them with respect. You wouldn’t throw your friends in the garbage. You wouldn’t flush your friends down the toilet. If that’s the way you treat your friends or your drugs, you don’t deserve to have either. Give them to me. Drugs are wonderful things. I won’t listen to anybody trying to get me to give them up. I’d rather give up food and drink—in fact, on occasion, I have.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“It was one of those rare times of shared happiness, of perfect contentment. We had a feeling of expectation, that what was already wonderful would only get better and better as time went on. These moments are one of the rarest, most fragile things in the world. You have to seize the day; you have to recall all the rotten, dirty things you endured to earn this peace. You have to remember to enjoy each minute, each hour, because although you may feel like it's going to last forever, the world plans otherwise. You want to be grateful for every precious second, but you simply can't do it. It's not in human nature to live life to the fullest. Haven't your ever noticed that equal amounts of pain and joy are not, in fact, equal in duration? Pain drags on until you wonder if life will ever be bearable again; pleasure, though, once it's reached its peak, fades faster than a trodden gardenia, and your memory searches in vain for the sweet scent.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“The longer I observe the way people really act, the happier I am that I never pay attention to them.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“Drugs are your friends, treat them with respect. You wouldn’t throw your friends in the garbage. You wouldn’t flush your friends down the toilet. If that’s the way you treat your friends or your drugs, you don’t deserve to have either. Give them to me.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“I closed my eyes and wished I believed in something enough to pray to it.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“The longer I observe the way people really act, the happier I am that I never pay attention to them. The”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“After sex, all animals are sad; after any kind of pleasure, really. We’re not built for pleasure. We’re built for agony and for seeing things too clearly, which is often a terrible agony in itself. I loathed myself then, and I loathed myself now. Dr.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“The two women looked at me as if I were the Messiah returning with their personal salvations sealed in separate envelopes.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“I don't carry a weapon, Mr. Bogatyrev. Not usually. I've never been in a situation where I needed one. Either the other guy has one, and I do what he says, or he doesn't, and I make him do what I say.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“it is the nature of religions to put a higher premium on your proper attention to ritual than on your convenience.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“I rolled over and faced the cracked green wall. I regretted that simple action immediately; it had felt like a slow-motion film with every other frame missing.”
― George Alec Effinger, quote from When Gravity Fails
“It is true, I thought. I am living a life.”
― Patrick deWitt, quote from The Sisters Brothers
“Peck Valley would have shuddered a bit had it known the easy ethics of its mortuary artist in such debatable matters as the ownership of costly “laying-out” apparel invisible beneath the casket’s lid, and the degree of dignity to be maintained in posing and adapting the unseen members of lifeless tenants to containers not always calculated with sublimest accuracy. Most distinctly Birch was lax, insensitive, and professionally undesirable;”
― H.P. Lovecraft, quote from The Complete Works of H.P. Lovecraft
“Odd, she thought, how intensely you knew a person, or thought you did, when you were in love - soaked, drenched in love - only to discover later that perhaps you didn't know that person quite as well as you had imagined. Or weren't quite as well known as you had hoped to be. In the beginning, a lover drank in every word and gesture and then tried to hold on to that intensity for as long as possible. But inevitable, if two people were together long enough, that intensity had to wane.”
― Anita Shreve, quote from The Pilot's Wife
“Some people can seem perfect... everything about them can, on paper, be just right.
Until you get to know them. Really know them.
Then you find out, in the end, while they might be perfect to every one else, they just aren't right for you.”
― Meg Cabot, quote from Forever Princess
“Nobody got me out," Nellie replied. "They just let me go. They think I'm a deranged Jonah Wizard fan. Apparently, the hotel's full of them. A couple of idiots actually jumped off the front balcony. Can you picture that?"
"In Technicolor," Amy said bitterly.
"That low-down KGB reject!" Dan fumed. "I can't believe she cheated me–right when I was in the middle of cheating her!”
― Gordon Korman, quote from One False Note
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.