“...things happen when you least expect them. Things that can change your whole life.”
“...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.”
“Life, it is not simple like a garden, where flowers are always flowers and weeds are always weeds.”
“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.”
“--I wouldn't throw that cat out of bed.
--When did you get a cat?”
“Ethel Jackson was the cool side of my pillow when I had a fever.”
“Let bygones be bygones because everybody knew that forgiveness was divine.”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Clearly, Nell was going crazy. (Well, she certainly had the hair for it.)”
“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?”
“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.”
“I never wanted to be safe... I wanted to be good.”
“It's impossible to say a thing exactly the way it was, because of what you say can never be exact, you always have to leave something out, there are too many parts, sides, crosscurrents, nuances; too many gestures, which could mean this or that, too many shapes which can never be fully described, too many flavors, in the air or on the tongue, half-colors, too many.”
“Until this ends, my cock is the only cock you’re allowed to have, your mouth belongs to me, and if you’re ever wet and in need of pleasure, you’ll wait until I’m available to give it to you.”
“It was higher and shriller than Holly’s, so we knew that it was Kipps.”
“The very essence of things is totally changed. You neither are agreed upon the definition of the soul nor on that of matter. Descartes, as I observed in my last, maintains that the soul is the same thing with thought, and Mr. Locke has given a pretty good proof of the contrary. Descartes asserts farther, that extension alone constitutes matter, but Sir Isaac adds solidity to it. How furiously contradictory are these opinions! Non nostrum inter vos tantas componere lites (Virgil).”
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.
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