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Sometimes people have to be allowed to have something to live for in order to survive everything else.
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Sometimes good people do terrible things in the belief that they’re trying to protect what they love.
“There are three types of people: winners, losers, and the ones who watch.”
The worst thing we know about other people is that we’re dependent upon them. That their actions affect our lives. Not just the people we choose, the people we like, but all the rest of them: the idiots.
people will always choose a simple lie over a complicated truth, because the lie has one unbeatable advantage: the truth always has to stick to what actually happened, whereas the lie just has to be easy to believe.
many of our worst deeds are the result of our never wanting to admit that we’re wrong. The greater the mistake and the worse the consequences, the more pride we stand to lose if we back down. So no one does.
Everyone is a hundred different things, but in other people’s eyes we usually get the chance to be only one of them. Kira
The best thing about nature is that it isn’t nostalgic; rocks and trees don’t give a damn about their previous owners.
Everything has a breaking point, and even though people always say that “a joy shared is a joy doubled,” we seem to insist on believing that the opposite is true of sorrow. Perhaps that isn’t actually the case. Two drowning people with lead weights around their ankles may not be each other’s salvation; if they hold hands, they’ll just sink twice as fast. In the end the weight of carrying each other’s broken hearts becomes unbearable.
It’s impossible to measure love, but that doesn’t stop us coming up with new ways to try. One of the simplest is space: How much space am I prepared to give the person that you are so that you can become the person you want to become?
“Grief is the price we pay for love,
most people are only trying to get through the day.
There’s a loser in every relationship. We may not like to admit it, but one of us always gets a little more and one of us always gives up a little more readily.
“Everyone with money wants something,
It’s hard to care about people. Exhausting, in fact, because empathy is a complicated thing. It requires us to accept that everyone else’s lives are also going on the whole time. We have no pause button for when everything gets too much for us to deal with, but then neither does anyone else.
Fathers’ hopes can so easily suffocate their sons.
The only thing you can rely on in all towns, big and small alike, is that there will be broken people. It’s nothing to do with the place, just life; it can beat us up. And if that happens, it’s easy to find your way to a pub; bars can quickly become sad places. Someone who has nowhere else to go can grasp a glass a little too tightly; someone who’s tired of falling can take refuge in the bottom of a bottle, seeing as you can’t fall much further from there.
cynicism is simply a chemical reaction to too much disappointment.
When terrible things happen, most people become waves, but some people become rocks. Waves are tossed back and forth when the wind comes, but the rocks just take a beating, immovable, waiting for the storm to blow over.
Power is the ability to get other people to do what you want.
The truth about most people is as simple as it is unbearable: we rarely want what is best for everyone; we mostly want what’s best for ourselves.
“When the Devil gets old, he gets religious.”
When guys are scared of the dark, they’re scared of ghosts and monsters, but when girls are scared of the dark, they’re scared of guys.
it’s so easy to fool your parents. That they’re so desperate for you to be happy that they believe you even when you’re lying.
the monster is always at its worst right before you set eyes on it. Our imaginations are always much more terrifying than we’re actually aware of.
Anyone who feels responsibility isn’t free.
Anxiety. It’s an invisible ruler.
You can always be absolutely certain of one thing when it comes to power, Peter: no one who gets their hands on it ever lets go of it voluntarily.”
Our spontaneous reactions are rarely our proudest moments. It’s said that a person’s first thought is the most honest, but that often isn’t true. It’s often just the most stupid. Why else would we have afterthoughts?
It’s always the aggressors’ feelings we have to defend. As if they’re the ones who need our understanding.
“My dad probably wished I was a boy sometimes.” “Why?” “Because he knew I’d always have to be twice as good as the men to be accepted.
It’s so easy to get people to hate one another. That’s what makes love so impossible to understand. Hate is so simple that it always ought to win. It’s an uneven fight.
