“In reality, there is no materialist like the artist, asking back from life the double and the wastage and the cost on what he puts out in emotional usury.”
― Nancy Milford, quote from Zelda
“I hope I'll never get ambitious enough to try anything. It's so much nicer to be damned sure I could do it better than other people - and I might not could if I tried...”
― Nancy Milford, quote from Zelda
“It was not, Zelda wrote, prosperity or the softness of life, or any instability that marred the war generation; it was a great emotional disappointment resulting from the fact that life moved in poetic gestures when they were younger and had since settled back into buffoonery.”
― Nancy Milford, quote from Zelda
“It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.”
― Nancy Milford, quote from Zelda
“He fought for his very survival. If he fought dirty sometimes that does not diminish the fact that he refused to give up.”
― Nancy Milford, quote from Zelda
“I was in love with a whirlwind and I must spin a net big enough to catch it,”
― Nancy Milford, quote from Zelda
“Zelda was a creature who overflowed with activity, radiant with desire to take from life every chance her charm, youth, and intelligence provided so abundantly.”
― Nancy Milford, quote from Zelda
“It’s the first time I’ve seen early morning in a terribly long time— The sun all yellow and red, like a huge luminous peach hanging on a black shadow-tree—just visible thru the mist—”
― Nancy Milford, quote from Zelda
“Sweetheart, please don’t worry about me— I want to always be a help—You know I am all yours and love you with all my heart.”
― Nancy Milford, quote from Zelda
“Only one who loves can remember so well.”
― Anton Chekhov, quote from Selected Stories
“Nothing of real worth can ever be bought. Love, friendship, honour, valour, respect. All these things have to be earned.”
― David Gemmell, quote from Shield of Thunder
“One time I listened to Farmer give a talk on HIV to a class at the Harvard School of Public Health, and in the midst of reciting data, he mentioned the Haitian phrase “looking for life, destroying life,” Then he explained, “It’s an expression Haitians use if a poor woman selling mangoes falls off a truck and dies.” I felt as if for that moment I could see a little way into his mind, It seemed like a place of hyperconnectivity, At moments like that, I thought that what he wanted was to erase both time and geography, connecting all parts of his life and tying them instrumentally to a world in which he saw intimate, inescapable connections between the gleaming corporate offices of Paris and New York and a legless man lying on the mud floor of a hut in the remotest part of remote Haiti. Of all the world’s errors, he seemed to feel, the most fundamental was the “erasing” of people, the “hiding away” of suffering. “My big struggle is how people can not care, erase, not remember.”
― Tracy Kidder, quote from Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, A Man Who Would Cure the World
“Mess with my weed again and I’ll be informing Daddy that there was an early casualty on the mission.” I saw him wince at my designation for Mircea and grinned.”
― Karen Chance, quote from Midnight's Daughter
“...for a country whose people ceased to believe in magic soon lost much of their ability to imagine and dream, and before long, they ceased to believe--or hope-- for anything.”
― Mercedes Lackey, quote from The Fairy Godmother
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.