Joining the ranks of the World Book Day celebrations is a new initiative – World Book Night – to take place for the first time this Saturday, 5th March. It’s the first ever attempted far-reaching celebration of adult books, and it’s taking place in the UK and Ireland this weekend.
The book give-away will comprise 40,000 copies of each of the 25 carefully selected titles, to be given away by 20,000 ‘givers’, who will each distribute 48 copies of their chosen title to whomever they choose on World Book Night. The remaining books will be distributed by World Book Night itself in places that might otherwise be difficult to reach, such as prisons and hospitals.
As we said on World Book Day, we’re huge advocates of literacy and efforts to encourage reading in people of all ages. We’re also excited to be taking part in World Book Night ourselves!
Our Web Editor Nicola has been selected as a giver and we will be celebrating all things quotable by adding our own little twist. We’ll be handing out 48 copies of Alan Bennet’s A Life Like Other People‘s on the streets of Glasgow, along with our friend Holly, who has copies of Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters to distribute. Keep an eye on our Twitter – @QuotablesHQ – for updates.
To celebrate, here are a selection of our quotes from each of the books to be given away on World Book Night.
Half of a Yellow Sun by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
There are some things that are so unforgivable that they make other things easily forgivable.
— Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
Case Histories* by Kate Atkinson
She should have done science, not spent all her time with her head in novels. Novels gave you a completely false idea about life, they told lies and they implied there were endings when in reality there were no endings, everything just went on and on and on.
— Kate Atkinson
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
If you knew what was going to happen, if you knew everything that was going to happen next — if you knew in advance the consequences of your own actions — you’d be doomed. You’d be ruined as God. You’d be a stone. You’d never eat or drink or laugh or get out of bed in the morning. You’d never dare to.
— Margaret Atwood
A Life Like Other People’s by Alan Bennett
A life varies in social importance. We set most value on the life of a child.
— Alan Bennett
The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John le Carré
He remembered how on nights like these, clusters of Berlin policemen and Allied soldiers used to gather under the arc lights, stamping their feet, cursing the cold, fidgeting their rifles from shoulder to shoulder, puffing clouds of frosted breath into each other’s faces. He remembered how the tanks waited, growling to keep their engines warm, their gun barrels picking targets on the other side, feigning strength.
— John le Carre
Killing Floor by Lee Child
I slid slowly out of the booth and extended my wrists to the officer with the revolver. I wasn’t going to lie on the floor. Not for these country boys. Not if they brought along their whole police department with howitzers.
— Lee Child
The World’s Wife by Carol Ann Duffy
Be terrified.
It’s you I love,
perfect man,
Greek God, my own;
but I know you’ll go,
betray me, stray
from home.
So better by far for
me if you were stone.
— Carol Ann Duffy, from the poem “Medusa”
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time by Mark Haddon
Prime numbers are what is left when you have taken all the patterns away. I think prime numbers are like life. They are very logical but you could never work out the rules, even if you spent all your time thinking about them.
— Mark Haddon
New Selected Poems by Seamus Heaney
The wintry haw is burning out of season,
crab of the thorn, a small light for small people,
wanting no more from them but that they keep
the wick of self-respect from dying out,
not having to blind them with illumination.
— Seamus Heaney
Rachel’s Holiday by Marian Keyes
The events that led to me being called a drug addict had the same element of celestial farce that the rest of my life had.
— Marian Keyes
The Reluctant Fundamentalist by Mohsin Hahmed
Some of my relatives held onto imagined memories the way that homeless people hold onto lottery tickets. Nostalgia was their crack cocaine, if you will, and my childhood was littered with the consequences of their addiction: unserviceable debts, squabbles over inheritances, the odd alcoholic or suicide. In this, Jim and I were indeed similar:he had grown up outside the candy store, and I had grown up on its threshold as its door was being shut.
— Mohsin Hamid
Agent Zigzag by Ben Macintyre
The thievery started in a small way: a forged check here, a snatched suitcase there, a little light burglary. His early crimes were unremarkable, the first faltering steps of an apprentice.
— Ben Macintyre
Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez
The only regret I will have in dying is if it is not for love.
— Gabriel García Márquez
Life of Pi by Yann Martel
Dare I say I miss him? I do. I miss him. I still see him in my dreams. They are nightmares mostly, but nightmares tinged with love. Such is the strangeness of the human heart.
— Yann Martel
Stuart: A Life Backwards by Alexander Masters
And so on, until you arrive at the other side, among the purely abstract self-harming: the grinding over your failures, the refusal to remember anything good, the determination to ensure – if anyone falls into the mistake of making it clear they actually like you – that the next time round they change their opinion pronto. Emotional self-cannibalism, in other words, like those tessellated pictures of a person grappling with a mirror image of himself.
— Alexander Masters
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.
— Rohinton Mistry
Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
My life amounts to no more than one drop in a limitless ocean. Yet what is any ocean, but a multitude of drops?
— David Mitchell
Beloved by Toni Morrison
There is a loneliness that can be rocked. Arms crossed, knees drawn up, holding, holding on, this motion, unlike a ship’s, smooths and contains the rocker. It’s an inside kind–wrapped tight like skin. Then there is the loneliness that roams. No rocking can hold it down. It is alive. On its own. A dry and spreading thing that makes the sound of one’s own feet going seem to come from a far-off place.
— Toni Morrison
One Day by David Nicholls
“Just kidding” was exactly what people wrote when they meant every word.
— David Nicholls
Northern Lights by Philip Pullman
That’s the duty of the old,’ said the Librarian, ‘to be anxious on the behalf of the young. And the duty of the young is to scorn the anxiety of the old.’ They sat for a while longer, and then parted, for it was late, and they were old and anxious.
— Philip Pullman
All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque
It is very queer that the unhappiness of the world is so often brought on by small men.
— Erich Maria Remarque
Dissolution by C.J. Sansom
I was down in Surrey on business for Lord Cromwell’s office, when the summons came.
— C. J. Sanson
Toast by Nigel Slater
Food has been my career, my hobby, and, it must be said, my escape.
— Nigel Slater
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark
Allow me, in conclusion, to congratulate you warmly upon your sexual intercourse, as well as your singing.
— Muriel Spark
Fingersmith by Sarah Waters
We have a name for your disease. We call it a hyper-aesthetic one. You have been encouraged to over-indulge yourself in literature; and have inflamed your organs of fancy.
— Sarah Waters
Are you taking part in World Book Night? Which book would you most like to give out?
Image by mindyapple.
