Ann > Ann's Quotes

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., I Have a Dream: Writings and Speeches That Changed the World

“Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, "Love your enemies." It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. Just keep being friendly to that person. Just keep loving them, and they can’t stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they’ll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That’s love, you see. It is redemptive, and this is why Jesus says love. There’s something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive. So love your enemies. (from "Loving Your Enemies")”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Knock at Midnight: Inspiration from the Great Sermons of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

“I'm not telling you it's going to be easy - I'm telling you it's going to be worth it.”
― Art Williams

“It's not about perfect. It's about effort. And when you bring that effort every single day, that's where transformation happens. That's how change occurs.”
― Jillian Michaels

“At some point you have to stop acting as though life is happening to you and acknowledge the ways you are happening to it. Once you take responsibility for your side of the street, you grant yourself the power to improve every aspect of your life by simply acting and behaving differently.”
― Jillian Michaels, Unlimited: A Three-Step Plan for Achieving Your Dreams

“The difference between who you are and who you want to be, is what you do.”
― Bill Phillips

“So she sat on the porch and watched the moon rise. Soon its amber fluid was drenching the earth, and quenching the thirst of the day.”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God

“It’s never the wedding dresses, you know. We keep those, too, but only because they’re so blooming expensive. No. I’ve seen enough old ladies’ closets to know what we really hold on to. Not the till-death-do-us-part dresses. It’s those first lovely dresses: the slow dance dresses, the good-night-kiss dresses. It’s those first pangs we hold on to.”
― Alexis M. Smith, Glaciers

“They spent most of that first summer in a campground in California, near the town of Oceano, central coast. South of the beach access road, people rode ATVs over the dunes, and the ATV engines sounded like bugs from a distance, a high buzzing whine. Ambulances drove down the beach to collect ATV drivers three or four times a day. But north of the road, the beach was quiet. Leon loved walking north. There wasn’t much between Oceano and Pismo Beach, the next town up the coast. This lonely stretch of California, forgotten shoreline, sand streaked with black.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel

“Imagining an alternate reality where there was no Iraq War, for example, or where the terrifying new swine flu in the Republic of Georgia hadn’t been swiftly contained; an alternate world where the Georgia flu blossomed into an unstoppable pandemic and civilization collapsed.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, The Glass Hotel

“America was waking up, as Germany once did, to the awareness that one-third of our people will kill one-third of our people while one-third of our people watches.”
― Harlan Coben, The Boy from the Woods

“Extremists are relentless. They don’t see right or wrong—they see us and them.”
― Harlan Coben, The Boy from the Woods

“Life isn’t lived in the black and white, Wilde. People like to think so nowadays. All the online outrage, things are either all good or all bad. But life is lived in the gray. Life is lived in the nuances.”
― Harlan Coben, The Boy from the Woods

“Invisible lines dissected black lives from white ones, and these lines were intentional and political and created with clear meaning. The unspoken rules and written laws define these boundaries.”
― Catherine Adel West, Saving Ruby King

“Build your scaffolding again, but while you’re conscious. Use the bricks that you’ve still got, in spite of the pandemic. Make coffee in the morning. Meditate. Watch Schitt’s Creek. Have a glass of wine at dinner. FaceTime the friends you can’t see in person. Whatever habits you used to have, stack them up and give yourself structure. I promise. You won’t feel as unsettled.”
― Jodi Picoult, Wish You Were Here

“I hate this world. People are small. They’re ignorant, and they’re happy to stay that way. They make an effort to. They’ll spend time and energy finding ways not to learn things just to feel comfortable with their beliefs.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, Only Human

“People are denying even the most basic scientific facts because it makes them feel better about hurting each other. Do you realize how horrifying that is? We’re talking about human beings making a conscious effort, going out of their way, to be ignorant. Willfully stupid. They’re proud of it. They take pride in idiocy. There’s not even an attempt to rationalize things anymore.”
― Sylvain Neuvel, Only Human

“Books were faithful and reliable. You could pack them up and put them in a box, run your hands over the spines, flip through their pages full of memories. They always came with you, wherever you went.”
― Karen Piper, A Girl's Guide to Missiles: Growing Up in America's Secret Desert

“If you see a teenager in the wild, be gentle. Every single one, even the coolest among them, is navigating the world like a twitching sack of snakes stuck in the molting phase.”
― Danielle Henderson, The Ugly Cry: How I Became a Person

“Grief, I'd come to realize was like dust, When you're in the thick of a dust storm, you're completely disoriented by the onslaught, struggling to see or breathe. But as the force recedes, and you slowly find your bearing and see a path forward, the dust begins to settle into the crevices. And it will never disappear completely- as the years pass, you'll find it in unexpected places at unexpected moments.”
― Mikki Brammer, The Collected Regrets of Clover

“But she only wanted to scare Fig enough to ensure she'd never do anything like this again. Not scare her so much that she’d be retroactively traumatized by all she’d had the grace to avoid. If we had to worry about all our mothers’ fears, who among us would ever leave the house?”
― Laurie Frankel, Family Family

“It is an act of violence when an adult yells at a child, all adults know that deep down, because all adults were once little. Yet we still do it. Time after time, we fail at being human beings.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“People say that anxiety is fear for no reason, but Ted’s brain is very helpful when it comes to providing suggestions. Once he read a book that said that people with neuropsychiatric disorders need to “make friends with their brain,” but Ted and Ted’s brain are not friends, they’re classmates, forced to do a group assignment called “life” together. And it’s not going great.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends