“...things happen when you least expect them. Things that can change your whole life.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark
“...things can happen when you least expect them so you always gotta be prepared. And pay attention to the details. The devil is in the details.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark
“Life, it is not simple like a garden, where flowers are always flowers and weeds are always weeds.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark
“My arms were covered in scratches and had bled a little so I licked my finger and cleaned them off and thought God would have done a better job if he made blood taste like Three Musketeers bars.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark
“--I wouldn't throw that cat out of bed.
--When did you get a cat?”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark
“Ethel Jackson was the cool side of my pillow when I had a fever.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark
“Let bygones be bygones because everybody knew that forgiveness was divine.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark
“If we could find Sara's body, we'd probably get a reward and our pictures in the newspaper like Mary Lane did when she called in that fire she set.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark
“Eddie's ma, that would be Mrs. Callahan, her husband got killed last winter over at the Feelin' Good Cookie Factory. They had an open casket at the funeral so you could see dead Mr. Callahan, who hadn't looked that great in life and looked even worse in death. Especially after that cookie press got to him. But Mr. Becker from Becker Funeral Homes had done a nice job fluffing Mr. Callahan's face back out again so he ended up looking like one of those waxy mannequins that you pay a dime to see up at the Wisconsin state Fair.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark
“When I was sure she was asleep, I got up and went into Mother's room and pulled her yellow nightie out from the bottom drawer of her dresser, and then I got Daddy's Timex from the dressing table and put it on my wrist. After I said my prayers and told Daddy I was sorry like I did every night, I laid down at the foot of Mother's bed and drifted off to the sound of rain that was strong enough to be good for the crops, and tried and tried to remember the last time I felt safe.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark
“Clearly, Nell was going crazy. (Well, she certainly had the hair for it.)”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark
“Ninety-nine bottles of beer on the wall, ninety-nine bottles of beer... If one of those bottles should happen to fall, there'd be how many bottles of beer on the wall?”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark
“And as I watched the car pull away toward the cemetery, the little white funeral flag waving good-bye, I felt blessed to be breathing, to have my heart beating.”
― Lesley Kagen, quote from Whistling In the Dark
“I noted that he had a new type of sandal to go with his clothes—they had a special strap circling the big toe, and another for the rest of the toes. Around the soles, gilded lotuses were painted directly on the leather.”
― Margaret George, quote from The Memoirs of Cleopatra
“I was still a boy when I left the Ozarks, only sixteen years old. Since that day, I’ve left my footprints in many lands: the frozen wastelands of the Arctic, the bush country of Old Mexico, and the steaming jungles of Yucatán. Throughout my life, I’ve been a lover of the great outdoors. I have built campfires in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, and hunted wild turkey in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee and the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. I have climbed the Grand Tetons of Wyoming, and hunted bull elk in the primitive area of Idaho. I can truthfully say that, regardless of where I have roamed or wandered, I have always looked for the fairy ring. I have never found one, but I’ll keep looking and hoping. If the day ever comes that I walk up to that snow-white circle, I’ll step into the center of it, kneel down, and make one wish, for in my heart I believe in the legend of the rare fairy ring.”
― Wilson Rawls, quote from Summer of the Monkeys
“Many people just like to show that they're thinking the right thoughts. And as the 'right' thoughts change like the wind, so do they.”
― Mark Helprin, quote from A Soldier of the Great War
“The fresh smell of coffee soon wafted through the apartment, the smell that separates night from day.”
― Haruki Murakami, quote from Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage
“When Don Quixote went out into the world, that world turned into a mystery before his eyes. That is the legacy of the first European novel to the entire subsequent history of the novel. The novel teaches us to comprehend the world as a question. There is wisdom and tolerance in that attitude.”
― Milan Kundera, quote from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting
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.