“I've heard fate talked of. It's not a word I use. I think we make our own choices. I think how we live our lives is our own doing, and we cannot fully hope on dreams and stars. But dreams and stars can guide us, perhaps. And the heart's voice is a strong one. Always is.
Your heart's voice is your true voice. It is easy to ignore it, for sometimes it says what we'd rather it did not - and it is so hard to risk the things we have. But what life are we living, if we don't live by our hearts? Not a true one. And the person living it is not the true you.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“Sometimes we have so much to say, we cannot say it. Sometimes it's best we do not say goodbyes.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“Your heart's voice is your true voice. It is easy to ignore it, for sometimes it says what we'd rather it did not - and it is so hard to risk the things we have. But what life are we living, if we don't live by our hearts? Not a true one. And the person living it is not the true you.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“Which people take the time to care for their souls, these days? I reckon not many. But...hear this: I think that maybe in our lives -- in our scrabbling for food, in the washing of our bodies and warming of them, in our small daily battles -- we can forget our souls. We do not tend to them, as if they matter less. But I don't think they matter less.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“I've heard fate talked of. It's not a word I use. I think we make our own choices. I think how we live our lives is our own doing, and we cannot fully hope on dreams and stars. But dreams and stars can guide us, perhaps. And the heart's voice is a strong one. Always is.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“No war. Fight with your pen. Give your battle-cry in ink, and mark your dreams down on a page”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“It is evening. The moon is small, and new. There are stars, and a stream's sound, and I can hear the wings of insects, in the dark. I think what gifts we are given, such gifts--every day.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“But maybe the best thing I learnt was this: that we cannot know a person's soul and nature until we've sat beside them, and talked.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“Mostly, she sees the good in the world, the light where there is dark... She sees beauty where we mostly pass it by. But tonight, she was heavy-hearted. I think sometimes she unfolds all her losses and stares at them, in the dark.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“The only evil in the world is the one that lies in people—in their pride, and greed, and duty. Remember that.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“God works as he chooses - we have our tests and He has His revelations”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“This is the place. I was certain. For the heart knows its home when it finds it, and on finding it, stays there.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“What creatures we are. What powers are in us--in all of us. What we already know, if we choose to spend time with ourselves. What a deep love we can feel.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“Your heart’s voice is your true voice. It is easy to ignore it, for sometimes it says what we’d rather it did not—and it is so hard to risk the things we have. But what life are we living, if we don’t live by our hearts? Not a true one. And the person living it is not the true you.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“The Highland way says it's who you say you love and who you serve, which is of worth. Not some title that is passed down upon you by tradition. That's the English way, and the Lowland way--but who can be born a nobleman? Nobility is earned... 'Tis our choices that make us.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“Oh there is always sadness. Always grief. I have heard folks say this life could be all hardship and sorrow, if we let it be. If we let our hearts seal over.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“We are the Magick--we are. The truest magick in this world is in us... It is in our movements and in what we say and feel.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“What was dark will always be dark, I know that. Death is still death. Hatred will never be far, in this life.
But also, there is light. It is everywhere. It floods this world--the world brims with it. Once, I sat by the Coe and watched a shaft of light come down through the trees, through leaves, and wondered if there was a greater beauty, or a simpler one. There are many great beauties. but all of them--from the snow, to his fern-red hair, to my mare's eye reflecting the sky as she smelt the air of Rannoch Moor--have light in them, and are worth it. They are worth the darker parts.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“But Cora said all people bury what it is they fear--so it cannot hurt them. So it is kept from them, locked up in the earth or in the sea.
Does it work? I asked her. Burying a feared thing?
She pursed her lips. Maybe. If it done justly, and with an honest, hopeful heart....”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“I had thought the second sight was a dream, or a vision, a sudden rush of breath. I had thought that the truth might step into my hut, like a ghost, and say its name--that I might find it, if I sought it. But, I was wrong.
You will know it, in time...
I knew it, now. And I knew it was a feeling--deep, in the chest, or in more than the chest. It was a feeling in the bones, in the womb, in the soul.”
― Susan Fletcher, quote from Witch Light
“Frank's bio prompts us to to ask ourselves why we seem to require of our art an ironic distance from deep convictions or desperate questions, so that contemporary writers have either to make jokes of them or else try to work them in under cover of some formal trick like intertextual quotation or incongruous juxtaposition, sticking the really urgent stuff inside asterisks as part of some multivalent defamiliarization flourish or some shit...Our intelligentsia distrust strong belief, open conviction. Material passion is one thing, but ideological passion disgusts us on some deep level.”
― David Foster Wallace, quote from Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
“He was too many things at once - a boy, a man, and everything in between - and the differing parts of himself seldom came into balance. She found him attractive in that way. Yet the perception saddened her: she herself wasn't too many things, but too few.”
― Stephen R. Donaldson, quote from The Mirror of Her Dreams
“Every individual is a meeting ground for many different allegiances, and sometimes these loyalties conflict with one another and confront the person who harbors them with difficult choices”
― Amin Maalouf, quote from In the Name of Identity: Violence and the Need to Belong
“What idiocy, to racing into this story and its labyrinths, sprinting away from our happiness among the fresh spring grasses by the oak.”
― Ian McEwan, quote from Enduring Love
“The faculty of re-solution is possibly much invigorated by mathematical study, and especially by that highest branch of it which, unjustly, and merely on account of its retrograde operations, has been called, as if par excellence, analysis. Yet to calculate is not in itself to analyse. A chess-player, for example, does the one without effort at the other. It follows that the game of chess, in its effects upon mental character, is greatly misunderstood. I am not now writing a treatise, but simply prefacing a somewhat peculiar narrative by observations very much at random; I will, therefore, take occasion to assert that the higher powers of the reflective intellect are more decidedly and more usefully tasked by the unostentatious game of draughts than by a the elaborate frivolity of chess. In this latter, where the pieces have different and bizarre motions, with various and variable values, what is only complex is mistaken (a not unusual error) for what is profound. The attention is here called powerfully into play. If it flag for an instant, an oversight is committed resulting in injury or defeat. The possible moves being not only manifold but involute, the chances of such oversights are multiplied; and in nine cases out of ten it is the more concentrative rather than the more acute player who conquers. In draughts, on the contrary, where the moves are unique and have but little variation, the probabilities of inadvertence are diminished, and the mere attention being left comparatively unemployed, what advantages are obtained by either party are obtained by superior acumen. To be less abstract, let us suppose a game of draughts where the pieces are reduced to four kings, and where, of course, no oversight is to be expected. It is obvious that here the victory can be decided (the players being at all equal) only by some recherché movement, the result of some strong exertion of the intellect. Deprived of ordinary resources, the analyst throws himself into the spirit of his opponent, identifies himself therewith, and not unfrequently sees thus, at a glance, the sole methods (sometime indeed absurdly simple ones) by which he may seduce into error or hurry into miscalculation.”
― Edgar Allan Poe, quote from The Murders in the Rue Morgue: The Dupin Tales
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.