“In my years, I have seen that people must be their own gods and make their own good fortune. The bad will come or not come anyway.”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Wild Seed
“Civilization is the way one's own people live. Savagery is the way foreigners live.”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Wild Seed
“He could not tell her that he was angry because she did not love him. Even he could not utter such foolishness. Certainly, he did not love her. He did not love anyone except perhaps Isaac and a very few of his other children. Yet he wanted Anyanwu to be like his many other women and treat him like a god in human form, competing for his attention no matter how repugnant his latest body nor even whether he might be looking for a new body. They knew he took women almost as readily as he took men. Especially, he took women who had already given him what he wanted of them--usually several children. They served him and never thought they might be his next victims. Someone else. Not them.”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Wild Seed
“She learned quickly that it was not good to be too different. Great differences caused envy, suspicion, fear, charges of witchcraft.”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Wild Seed
“You are a good man,” she had observed contentedly. “And it has been too long since I had this.” He was surprised”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Wild Seed
“Could she give Doro what he wanted—what she herself had wanted for so long—children who would not die?”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Wild Seed
“Thus, when her enemies came to kill her, she knew more about surviving than they did about killing. And”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Wild Seed
“to be aware of a place where blackness was not a mark of slavery.”
― Octavia E. Butler, quote from Wild Seed
“When he graduated he’d thought life was going to be like a novel, starring him on his own personal hero’s journey, and that the world would provide him with an endless series of evils to triumph over and life lessons to learn. It took him a while to figure out that wasn’t how it worked.”
― Lev Grossman, quote from The Magician's Land
“Man might carve his mark on the earth but unless he's vigilant, Nature will take it all back.”
― Witi Ihimaera, quote from The Whale Rider
“Stop saying that! You sound absurd, and I don't even think you mean it. Besides, I'd never marry you," I told him. "I'm sixteen, and you're a slut, and you can't stop saying preposterous things!"
"True," he admitted. He kissed me on the lips and then I closed the door.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, quote from All These Things I've Done
“In other words, I heard life going on, and it was a comfort.”
― Anthony Burgess, quote from Earthly Powers
“The threat of taking something away makes us appreciate it more.”
― Simone Elkeles, quote from How to Ruin a Summer Vacation
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.