40 Book Quotes for Every Reader Who Gets Lost in Pages
Books have a strange power.
They pull you into worlds that don’t exist, introduce you to people you’ll never meet, and somehow still manage to say exactly what you needed to hear.
Maybe that’s why certain lines just stick. You close the book, but the words stay.
Some of us collect them. Some of us just remember them at the oddest moments on a rough day, in the middle of a conversation, or right before sleep.
These book quotes are for all of that.
Our Favorite Lines from Books
“There was before you and there was during you. For some reason, I never thought there would be an after you. But there was, and I was in it. I’ll be in it forever.” — Colleen Hoover
“…because we were looking at the same sky together, which is maybe more intimate than eye contact anyway. Anybody can look at you. It’s quite rare to find someone who sees the same world you see.” — John Green (Turtles All the Way Down)
“Strangers are just familiar souls who meet us at the crossroads of who we were and who we’re meant to be.” / “can we be strangers again?”
“You can’t be strong all the time sometimes you just need to sit and let your tears out.”
“That’s the thing about pain. It demands to be felt.” — John Green (The Fault in Our Stars)
“Do you know who the most dangerous kind of villain is? A woman with nothing left to lose.”
“it’s okay to draw a line and close the chapter. it’s okay to leave it behind and wish it the best.”
“There is no such thing as bad people. We’re all just people who sometimes do bad things.” — Colleen Hoover (It Ends with Us)
“I am not interested in being things that seem cool instead of trying new things that me soul wants. I am at a point that I want to learn & grow.” — Renuka Gavrani
“Remember: Some people will never ask for your side of the story, because the side they heard fits the description of how they already want to feel about you!”
“Maybe it’s not about happy ending. Maybe it’s about the story.” — attributed to Albert Camus
“…things are like the leaves of a tree. They can fall at any moment with a gust of wind.” — attributed to Marcus Aurelius
“If you have the ability to love, love yourself first.” — Charles Bukowski
“There is freedom waiting for you, On the breezes of the sky, And you ask, ‘What if I fall?’ Oh but my darling, What if you fly?” — Erin Hanson (~e.h)
Inspirational Quotes from Books
“All mushrooms are edible. Some are edible only once.” — Terry Pratchett
“A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.” — George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night
“I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship.” — Louisa May Alcott, Little Women
“It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” — J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
“The world breaks every one and afterward many are strong at the broken places.” — Ernest Hemingway, A Farewell to Arms
“I have been bent and broken, but—I hope—into a better shape.” — Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
“I thanked him then, for the prayers of a nonbeliever are as good as they are sincere, and I did not doubt the sincerity of Herger.” — Michael Crichton, Eaters of the Dead
“Your failure to understand that there are things much worse than death has always been your greatest weakness.” — J.K. Rowling
“Hell is empty and all the devils are here.” — William Shakespeare, The Tempest
“If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly harmed.” — Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
“Better to end than to mend.” — Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
“Seek freedom and become captive of your desires. Seek discipline and find your liberty.” — Frank Herbert, Chapterhouse: Dune
“A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.” — Thomas Paine, Common Sense
“When one gazes long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into thee.” — Friedrich Nietzsche
“Isn’t it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?” — L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables
“Courage, dear heart.” — C.S. Lewis, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader
“Even the smallest person can change the course of the future.” — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring
“Do not stop here. In the name of God, stop not! It is better to die on the way than to give up the quest.” — Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East
“We can’t win against obsession. They care, we don’t. They win.” — Douglas Adams, Life, the Universe and Everything
“All men dream, but not equally.” — T.E. Lawrence, The Seven Pillars of Wisdom
“How quickly was every bad thing discovered to be the fault of the previous administration.” — Susanna Clarke, Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell
“The only thing that does not abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience.” — Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“If you’re looking for the truth, you may find comfort in the end; if you’re looking for comfort, you will not get either comfort or truth.” — C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
“The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie.” — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, The Gulag Archipelago
“I can think, I can fast, and I can wait.” — Hermann Hesse, Siddhartha
“It does not do to dwell on dreams, and forget to live.” — J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter
“The most important step a man can take. It’s not the first one, is it? It’s the next one. Always the next one.” — Brandon Sanderson, Oathbringer
“To influence a person is to give him one’s own soul.” — Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
“Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker’s game because they almost always turn out to be — or to be indistinguishable from — self-righteous sixteen-year-olds possessing infinite amounts of free time.” — Neal Stephenson, Cryptonomicon
“Maybe no one is really ever free in this world. Maybe the only freedom there is, is the freedom to choose your own chains.” — Coby Lazar, Shadow Slave
“Always remember that the crowd that applauds your coronation is the same crowd that will applaud your beheading. People like a show.” — Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
“We are healthy only to the extent that our ideas are humane.” — Kurt Vonnegut
“I am haunted by humans.” — Markus Zusak, The Book Thief
“I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?” — Hermann Hesse, Demian
“Everything was beautiful, and nothing hurt.” — Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five
“The man who does not read has no advantage over the man who cannot read.” — Mark Twain
“Real courage is when you know you’re licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.” — Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird
“You have to laugh at the things that hurt you just to keep yourself in balance, just to keep the world from driving you crazy.” — Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
“Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse, for some.” — Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale
“Those who shun the whimsy of things will experience rigor mortis before death.” — Tom Robbins
“Life, although it may only be an accumulation of anguish, is dear to me, and I will defend it.” — Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
“His soul swooned slowly as he heard the snow falling faintly through the universe and faintly falling, like the descent of their last end, upon all the living and the dead.” — James Joyce, The Dead
“I give you the mausoleum of all hope and desire… I give it to you not that you may remember time, but that you might forget it now and then for a moment and not spend all of your breath trying to conquer it.” — William Faulkner, The Sound and the Fury
“Intuitively, I knew how easily distances could harden and become permanent.” — Junot Díaz, Drown
“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.” — Irvine Welsh, Skagboys
“It wasn’t only wickedness and scheming that made people unhappy, it was confusion and misunderstanding; above all, it was the failure to grasp the simple truth that other people are as real as you.” — Ian McEwan, Atonement
“While the heart beats and the flesh palpitates, a creature endowed with will should never give place to despair.” — Jules Verne, Journey to the Center of the Earth
“My mother is a fish.” — William Faulkner, As I Lay Dying
“He loved Big Brother.” — George Orwell, 1984
“Talent is more erotic when it’s wasted.” — Don DeLillo, Cosmopolis
“It was the day my grandmother exploded.” — Iain Banks, Crow Road
“A man’s at odds to know his mind cause his mind is aught he has to know it with.” — Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
“More often than not, justice was a word written in blood.” — Steven Erikson
“A world made smooth allows no purchase.” — Steven Erikson
“Being with you and not being with you is the only way I have to measure time.” — Jorge Luis Borges
“When I was with Yoav, everything in me that had been sitting stood up.” — Nicole Krauss, Great House
Hope Quotes from Books
“Exactly a million to one chances crop up nine out of ten times.” — Terry Pratchett
“All stories are true. But this one really happened.” — Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
“And so we were ill-lit ships at night, passing close, yet all unaware.” — Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
“Honor is dead, but I’ll see what I can do.” — Brandon Sanderson, Words of Radiance
“Don’t worry that you aren’t giving people what they want. Give them who you are, and let that be enough.” — Brandon Sanderson, The Well of Ascension
“Well, I’m home.” — J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
“All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost.” — J.R.R. Tolkien
“The enemy isn’t men, or women, it’s bloody stupid people and no one has the right to be stupid.” — Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment
“Buy the ticket, take the ride.” — Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
“You don’t pass or fail at being a person, dear.” — Neil Gaiman, The Ocean at the End of the Lane
“It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to than I have ever known.” — Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
“The man in Black fled across the Desert, and the Gunslinger followed.” — Stephen King, The Gunslinger
“I always started a job with the feeling that I’d soon quit or be fired, and this gave me a relaxed manner that was mistaken for intelligence or some secret power.” — Charles Bukowski, Factotum
“I wondered if that was how forgiveness budded; not with the fanfare of epiphany, but with pain gathering its things, packing up, and slipping away unannounced in the middle of the night.” — Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
“Reader, I married him.” — Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre
“But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world.” — Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince
