“I did not want to think about people. I wanted the trees, the scents and colors, the shifting shadows of the wood, which spoke a language I understood. I wished I could simply disappear in it, live like a bird or a fox through the winter, and leave the things I had glimpsed to resolve themselves without me.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, quote from Winter Rose
“But you must stop playing among his ghosts -- it's stupid and dangerous and completely pointless. He's trying to lay them to rest here, not stir them up, and you seem eager to drag out all the sad old bones of his history and make them dance again. It's not nice, and it's not fair.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, quote from Winter Rose
“I did not want to think about people. I wanted the trees, the scents and colors, the shifting shadows of the wood, which spoke language I understood. I wished I could simply disappear in it, live like a bird or a fox through the winter, and leave the things I had glimpsed to resolve themselves without me.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, quote from Winter Rose
“Winds shook me apart piecemeal, flung a bone here, a bone there. My eyes became snow, my hair turned to ice; I heard it chime against my shoulders like wind-blown glass. If I spoke, words would fall from me like snow, pour out of me like black wind.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, quote from Winter Rose
“It's so hard to think in winter. The world seems confined in the space of your heart; you can't see beyond yourself.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, quote from Winter Rose
“He could pick my heart like a rose and watch it wither in his hand. Sometimes I think he is like that. At other times I think he is as simple and golden and generous as our father's fields. And then I see things in his eyes - things that I have never looked at, and I know that I have walked a short and easy road out of my past, while he has walked a thousand roads to meet me. I know Perrin's past; the same road runs into his future. I don't know Corbet.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, quote from Winter Rose
“In that place things begin to wear away even as they are built; the living die a little more each day. The sun is too far away; light slides endlessly into night; fire and love consume themselves; the heart tries to warm itself with ashes.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, quote from Winter Rose
“Something - a flick of color, the faint beat of the earth under my feet, or maybe my name in someone's thoughts - made me lift my eyes.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, quote from Winter Rose
“even I could not guess what misgivings lay behind Perrin's clear eyes. Perhaps none; perhaps he trusted Laurel without question. Perhaps he was right. All I knew is what Laurel's hands said when she spoke Corbet's name. And how often she said it, until it seemed, like the falling of autumn leaves, or the long ribbons of migrating birds, one of the season's changes.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, quote from Winter Rose
“Above us hung a tapestry of silver and gold and palest green that in my world had faded into white: a great oak so entwined with ivy it had died, its bare branches pushing through the leaves like bone. I stared at the roses, wanting to hold my hands to such red, but like the light, they burned cold.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, quote from Winter Rose
“She didn't bother taking off her snow-crusted cloak; she came to us quickly, dripping and shivering, her eyes luminous and strained from trying to see beyond the world.”
― Patricia A. McKillip, quote from Winter Rose
“I uncurled my legs and pushed until I had both arms fully extended and both legs straight up in the air. My dress fell down over my head, so if any of our neighbors were up and about, they saw more than just me going all Russian gymnast on our fence.”
― Rachel Hawkins, quote from Rebel Belle
“- Qual é, Jack, é mais do que isso - disse Ellen. Ela passou para um falsete agudo abobado - Ele é muito gato... É praticamente europeu. Quer dizer, ele viveu no mundo todo. E ele fala francês. - Ela cutucou Seph com o ombro. - E você viu os olhos dele? Eles mudam de cor, e ele tem aqueles cílios longos e escuros. E o jeito que ele beija. - Ela revirou os olhos.
(...)
- E então? Qual é o segredo de um grande beijo, Seph? - perguntou Jack - É a técnica, a duração, a intensidade ou o poder?
Seph soltou um suspiro dramático.
- Oh, está certo, Jack. Eu beijo você. Mas só desta vez.”
― Cinda Williams Chima, quote from The Wizard Heir
“You can give yourself a headache trying to decipher the tattoos on a naked man who’s leaping up and down on a bed.”
― John Irving, quote from Until I Find You
“In Minneapolis, tires were slashed and windows smashed. A high school student getting off a bus was hit in the face and told to “go back to China.” A woman was kicked in the thighs, face, and kidneys, and her purse, which contained the family’s entire savings of $400, was stolen; afterwards, she forbade her children to play outdoors, and her husband, who had once commanded a fifty-man unit in the Armée Clandestine, stayed home to guard the family’s belongings. In Providence, children walking home from school were beaten. In Missoula, teenagers were stoned. In Milwaukee, garden plots were vandalized and a car was set on fire. In Eureka, California, two burning crosses were placed on a family’s front lawn. In a random act of violence near Springfield, Illinois, a twelve-year-old boy was shot and killed by three men who forced his family’s car off Interstate 55 and demanded money. His father told a reporter, “In a war, you know who your enemies are. Here, you don’t know if the person walking up to you will hurt you.”
― Anne Fadiman, quote from The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures
“I don’t want you going there without me, ever…do you understand what I am saying?” he asks me, searching my face, probably looking for any sign of dissention.
“Let me get this straight, what if I got a craving for…I don’t know…Twinkies in the wee hours of the morning and all that was open was the Seven-Eleven. You’re saying I should wake you up, even if you’re crashed out, just so that you can go with me on a treat run?” I ask skeptically, trying to gauge his level of commitment to this course of action.
“Genevieve, Twinkies are really bad for you, but if you had to have one, then yes, that’s what I’m saying,” he smiles at my scenario. “Do you really like those things?”
“I’m not going to tell you if you’re going to tease me, but I will say that it’s suspiciously inhuman not to enjoy a Hostess snack from time to time,” I reply coyly. “I’ll buy you one. You’ll love it, I promise.”
And I’ll be doing the world a favor at the same time, I think, remembering him without his shirt on.”
― Amy A. Bartol, quote from Inescapable
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.