Favorite Book Quotes

Shivercide · 10-05-2009, 07:13 PM

Or just ones you love in general. A lot of times I'm reading a book and will come across an awesome line or several that totally stand out to me from the rest - it may be something witty, or something that gives me something to think about, or simply some really great imagery that I just have to write down and save because I find it such a pleasure to read.

Yes, I'm a book nerd and I save my favorite quotes from random books. But I'll keep it at just the most recent one, for now.

From Dean Koontz's book, Odd Hours:

Quote:

"Very nice," I said eventually. "The oil lamps."
She said, "The light of other days."
"Other days?"
"The sun grows the plants. The plants express essential oils. And the oils fire the lamps - giving back the light of other days."
I'd never thought of the light of an oil lamp being the stored, converted, and then liberated sunshine of years past, but of course it was.

I saved this one because I loved the way it was thought of and expressed and I found it extremely interesting.

So yeah, post book quotes you love.

Larki18 · 10-05-2009, 07:44 PM

I have several that I love from different books, but I'll stick with three.

Quote:

All we have to believe with is our senses, the tools we use to perceive the world: our sight, our touch, our memory. If they lie to us, then nothing can be trusted. And even if we do not believe, then still we cannot travel in any other way than the road our senses show us; and we must walk that road to the end.

-Neil Gaiman "American Gods"

Quote:

Even if there is no such thing as free will, we have to treat each other as if there were free will in order to live together in society. Because otherwise, every time somebody does something terrible, you can’t punish him, because he can’t help it, because his genes or his environment or God made him do it, and every time somebody does something good, you can’t honor him, because he was a puppet, too. If you think that everybody around you is a puppet, why bother talking to them at all? Why even try to plan anything or create anything, since everything you plan or create or desire or dream of is just acting out the script your puppeteer built into you.
So we conceive of ourselves and everyone around us as volitional beings. We treat everyone as if they did things with a purpose in mind, instead of because they’re being pushed from behind. We punish criminals. We reward altruists. We plan things and build things together. We make promises and expect each other to keep them. It’s all a made-up story, but when everybody believes that everybody’s actions are the result of free choice, and takes and gives responsibility accordingly, the result is civilization.

-Orson Scott Card, "Xenocide"

Quote:

How can I tell the good people from the bad, if the bad people all have some way of convincing themselves that they’re trying to do good even though they’re doing something terrible? And the good people can believe that they’re actually very bad even though they’re doing something good? Maybe you can only do good if you think you’re bad, and if you think you’re good then you can only do bad.
But…There’d be no sense in the world of you had to judge people by the opposite of how they tried to seem. Wasn’t it possible for a good person also to try to seem good? And just because somebody claimed to be scum didn’t mean that he wasn’t scum. Was there any way to judge people, if you can’t judge even by their purpose?

Orson Scott Card, "Xenocide"

Phoenix Fires · 10-07-2009, 05:42 PM

"...but when she saw me turn to her she reached and took my hand. She took it, not to be led by me, not to be comforted; only to hold it, because it was mine" - Fingersmith, Sarah Waters

"Anne could do no more; but her heart prophesied some mischance to damp the perfection of her felicity" - Persuasion, Jane Austin. It took me about three tries to understand almost every sentence in the book. I was proud of myself for finishing it. This one stuck in my head, lol.

Fanat1c · 10-08-2009, 12:48 PM

"Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves." 1984 by George Orwell

"A lot of people would talk about the horrors in other people's lives as if they were genuinely concerned to help them, but the truth was that they took pleasure in suffering of others, because that made them believe that they were happy and their life had been generous with them."

"You are someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that in my view is a serious illness."

"It would be far too early for me to tell you that I love you, but since I probably wont live through the night, it would also be too late."
Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho

Phoenix Fires · 10-13-2009, 03:39 AM

It's amazing what a little courage and leadership will do for good soldiers. You just rememer this: the day you have to be the first one to stand up and say, "follow me," that's the day you will earn every salute you ever get - Once A Warrior King by David Donovan. This one is personal to me.

This next one is a passage, rather than a quote, but it affected me nonetheless. Sorry for it's length. And for the record, GCSE's are the exams British kids take to complete their compulsory education (the equivilent of your high school diploma) which we take when we're 16.

An aspect of archaeology is romanticising the past, and often accrediting it with ideas that may never have been there in the first place. It is impossible to put yourself in the mind of one of your contemporaries, let alone the mind of someone on the other side of the world who lived centuries before your time.
To illustrate the point, let us imagine that in the future, 3000 years or more from today, our current civilisation has disappeared and been long forgotten. The only reminders of our time are fragmentary inscriptions and a few decorated stones from a wide variety of religious establishments, all completely contradictory. Imagine the scene: our towns have disappeared, all but footings and foundations, and the only complete texts to survive to tell us about life in the twentieth century are a pile of GCSE papers by a class of students of varying abilities. Now imagine, if you can, the archaeologist of the future trying to make sense of all this. To add to his information, he would excavate the field where your town had once been. In what had once been private gardens, in the central flower bed, surrounded by remains of decaying roots of flowering plants, he finds by chance a collection of garden gnomes. At once his find will be heralded as 'major and significant', since nothing of the like has ever been seen before. But in interpreting them, the gnomes will become 'local gods';, the house behind it will become the 'local temple'; and the biggest gnome, the one with fishing rod sitting over a well, will become the 'king of the gods', given responsibility for the 'food offerings' and 'libations' that the 'faithful' once dropped into his well.
Now you may think this amusing and far-fetched. But this is precisely what archaeology often does.
- Tutankhamen by Christine El Mahdy

Saphira · 10-13-2009, 07:19 AM

Mine are from A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray:

"But forgiveness...I'll hold onto that fragile slice of hope and keep it close, remembering that in each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We're each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. We've got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there's an awful lot of gray to work with. No one can live in the light all the time."

"You can never really know someone completely. That's why its the most terrifying thing in the world, really--taking someone on faith, hoping they'll take you on faith too. Its such a precarious balance, its a wonder we do it at all."

**just an illusion** · 10-13-2009, 07:43 AM

I write down quotes from books I read quite seldom but one of the books that had such lines that I simply had to note down them was "Three Comrades" by E.M. Remarque. The funny thing is that I didn't like the book much but some of Remarque's interpretations of people, their feelings and relationships felt so close to me that I was astounded. All of them are very realistic/pessimistic but he just expressed my thoughts and ideas. Though, I can't quote any of them here since I read the book in Russian and it's next to impossible to find these exact quotes in English, sorry.

Phoenix Fires · 10-16-2009, 06:49 AM

"For months I lay in bed and plotted how to kill my ex-husband. But I knew I'd bungle it and get caught, so I wrote it in a book instead" - author's note in the front of A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton

**Fredward** · 10-16-2009, 07:46 AM

This is from Wheel Of Time, dunno what book, by my favourite character Nynaeve it's not perfect cuz I haven't read the book in a while but it's close enough

After Valan Luca asks her why her eye is bruised.

"I didn't like the way it looked at me in the mirror this morning so I bit it."

Oh fuck that still makes me laugh. So funny. There are a a lot of quotes in the books that I really like, so I'll probably post em when I do another re-read.

Shivercide · 10-16-2009, 09:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Larki13

Orson Scott Card, "Xenocide"

This whole book was amazing (along with the rest of the series), and I really like the quotes you posted.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Phoenix Fires

"...but when she saw me turn to her she reached and took my hand. She took it, not to be led by me, not to be comforted; only to hold it, because it was mine"

I already told you, but have to say it again...I absolutely love this. It's so simple yet says so much to me. And yes I still have to read this book. XD

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fanat1c

"Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves." 1984 by George Orwell

That's actually one of my favorite quotes as well, from one of my favorite books.

So, I'll post some of my other favorites from 1984 and Xenocide. XD

Quote:

Originally Posted by 1984

"People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word."

---

"Your worst enemy, he reflected, was your nervous system. At any moment the tension inside you was liable to translate itself into some visible symptom."

---

"It was curious to think that the sky was the same for everybody, in Eurasia or Eastasia as well as here. And the people under the sky were also very much the same - everywhere, all over the world, hundreds or thousands of millions of people just like this, people ignorant of one another's existence, held apart by walls of hatred and lies, and yet almost exactly the same - people who had never learned to think but were storing up in their hearts and bellies and muscles the power that would one day overturn the world."

Quote:

Originally Posted by Xenocide

"The future is a hundred thousand threads, but the past is a fabric that can never be rewoven."

---

"Who is more cursed, the one who dies, unknowing until the very moment of his death or the one who watched his destruction as it approached, step by step, for days and weeks and years?"

---

"We spend our lives guessing at what's going on inside everybody else, and when we happen to get lucky and guess right, we think we "understand." Such nonsense. Even a monkey at a computer will type a word now and then."

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10-07-2009, 05:42 PM	Favorite Book Quotes Post #3
Phoenix Fires Farore Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: UK Age: 27 Posts: 4,991 Points: 1,016,900.38 Bank: 3,539,110,855,967.22 Total Points: 3,539,111,872,867.60 Donate	"...but when she saw me turn to her she reached and took my hand. She took it, not to be led by me, not to be comforted; only to hold it, because it was mine" - Fingersmith, Sarah Waters "Anne could do no more; but her heart prophesied some mischance to damp the perfection of her felicity" - Persuasion, Jane Austin. It took me about three tries to understand almost every sentence in the book. I was proud of myself for finishing it. This one stuck in my head, lol.

10-08-2009, 12:48 PM	Favorite Book Quotes Post #4
Fanat1c Enjoyer of Free Drinks Join Date: Apr 2006 Location: Bosnia Age: 24 Posts: 1,024 Points: 687.20 Bank: 1,424,168,424.37 Total Points: 1,424,169,111.57 Donate	"Never again will you be capable of ordinary human feeling. Everything will be dead inside you. Never again will you be capable of love, or friendship, or joy of living, or laughter, or curiosity, or courage, or integrity. You will be hollow. We shall squeeze you empty and then we shall fill you with ourselves." 1984 by George Orwell "A lot of people would talk about the horrors in other people's lives as if they were genuinely concerned to help them, but the truth was that they took pleasure in suffering of others, because that made them believe that they were happy and their life had been generous with them." "You are someone who is different, but who wants to be the same as everyone else. And that in my view is a serious illness." "It would be far too early for me to tell you that I love you, but since I probably wont live through the night, it would also be too late." Veronika Decides to Die by Paulo Coelho

10-13-2009, 03:39 AM	Favorite Book Quotes Post #5
Phoenix Fires Farore Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: UK Age: 27 Posts: 4,991 Points: 1,016,900.38 Bank: 3,539,110,855,967.22 Total Points: 3,539,111,872,867.60 Donate	It's amazing what a little courage and leadership will do for good soldiers. You just rememer this: the day you have to be the first one to stand up and say, "follow me," that's the day you will earn every salute you ever get - Once A Warrior King by David Donovan. This one is personal to me. This next one is a passage, rather than a quote, but it affected me nonetheless. Sorry for it's length. And for the record, GCSE's are the exams British kids take to complete their compulsory education (the equivilent of your high school diploma) which we take when we're 16. An aspect of archaeology is romanticising the past, and often accrediting it with ideas that may never have been there in the first place. It is impossible to put yourself in the mind of one of your contemporaries, let alone the mind of someone on the other side of the world who lived centuries before your time. To illustrate the point, let us imagine that in the future, 3000 years or more from today, our current civilisation has disappeared and been long forgotten. The only reminders of our time are fragmentary inscriptions and a few decorated stones from a wide variety of religious establishments, all completely contradictory. Imagine the scene: our towns have disappeared, all but footings and foundations, and the only complete texts to survive to tell us about life in the twentieth century are a pile of GCSE papers by a class of students of varying abilities. Now imagine, if you can, the archaeologist of the future trying to make sense of all this. To add to his information, he would excavate the field where your town had once been. In what had once been private gardens, in the central flower bed, surrounded by remains of decaying roots of flowering plants, he finds by chance a collection of garden gnomes. At once his find will be heralded as 'major and significant', since nothing of the like has ever been seen before. But in interpreting them, the gnomes will become 'local gods';, the house behind it will become the 'local temple'; and the biggest gnome, the one with fishing rod sitting over a well, will become the 'king of the gods', given responsibility for the 'food offerings' and 'libations' that the 'faithful' once dropped into his well. Now you may think this amusing and far-fetched. But this is precisely what archaeology often does. - Tutankhamen by Christine El Mahdy

10-13-2009, 07:19 AM	Favorite Book Quotes Post #6
Saphira Sexiest B!tch! Join Date: May 2004 Location: New England Age: 24 Posts: 1,339 Points: 30,652,806.72 Bank: 299,915,769.95 Total Points: 330,568,576.68 Donate	Mine are from A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray: "But forgiveness...I'll hold onto that fragile slice of hope and keep it close, remembering that in each of us lie good and bad, light and dark, art and pain, choice and regret, cruelty and sacrifice. We're each of us our own chiaroscuro, our own bit of illusion fighting to emerge into something solid, something real. We've got to forgive ourselves that. I must remember to forgive myself. Because there's an awful lot of gray to work with. No one can live in the light all the time." "You can never really know someone completely. That's why its the most terrifying thing in the world, really--taking someone on faith, hoping they'll take you on faith too. Its such a precarious balance, its a wonder we do it at all."

10-13-2009, 07:43 AM	Favorite Book Quotes Post #7
just an illusion heart full of dust Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: Moscow, Russia Age: 24 Posts: 4,313 Points: 71.40 Bank: 3,571,806,235,008.74 Total Points: 3,571,806,235,080.13 Donate	I write down quotes from books I read quite seldom but one of the books that had such lines that I simply had to note down them was "Three Comrades" by E.M. Remarque. The funny thing is that I didn't like the book much but some of Remarque's interpretations of people, their feelings and relationships felt so close to me that I was astounded. All of them are very realistic/pessimistic but he just expressed my thoughts and ideas. Though, I can't quote any of them here since I read the book in Russian and it's next to impossible to find these exact quotes in English, sorry.

10-16-2009, 06:49 AM	Favorite Book Quotes Post #8
Phoenix Fires Farore Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: UK Age: 27 Posts: 4,991 Points: 1,016,900.38 Bank: 3,539,110,855,967.22 Total Points: 3,539,111,872,867.60 Donate	"For months I lay in bed and plotted how to kill my ex-husband. But I knew I'd bungle it and get caught, so I wrote it in a book instead" - author's note in the front of A is for Alibi by Sue Grafton

10-16-2009, 07:46 AM	Favorite Book Quotes Post #9
Fredward I bow down to Faiza's abiding glory. Join Date: Aug 2008 Location: The Liminal Age: 19 Posts: 24,469 Points: 1,144,641.33 Bank: 52,206,656,535.96 Total Points: 52,207,801,177.28 Donate	This is from Wheel Of Time, dunno what book, by my favourite character Nynaeve it's not perfect cuz I haven't read the book in a while but it's close enough After Valan Luca asks her why her eye is bruised. "I didn't like the way it looked at me in the mirror this morning so I bit it." Oh fuck that still makes me laugh. So funny. There are a a lot of quotes in the books that I really like, so I'll probably post em when I do another re-read.

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