Michelle > Michelle's Quotes

“Would it save you a lot of time if I just gave up and went mad now?”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“People who have never been hunted always seem to think there’s a reason for it. “They wouldn’t do it without a cause, would they? You must have done something to provoke them.” As if that’s how oppression works.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Two boys carrying their mother to safety and then turning back for their father. Because a family does not leave anyone behind. And yet, in the end, that is precisely what they did, her boys. Left her alone.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Death’s greatest power is not that it can make people die, but that it can make people want to stop living.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“ ‘We want to be loved,’ ” quotes Britt-Marie. “ ‘Failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. The soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Even now, nothing between us existed except for the knowledge that we had the same sperm donor.  In the months since he’d been living with me, I couldn’t say much had changed. If anything, it felt like I’d been gifted with the burden of making sure a twenty-five-year-old man was good at all times. ”
― Shon, Heaven Sent

“It was a huge blow that wasn’t softened one bit by reminding myself of the old cliché that life isn’t fair. No, it isn’t, but it damned well should be.”
― Kelly Bishop, The Third Gilmore Girl

“He went home and rebuilt the whole house, ripped out the old countertop and put in a new, lower one.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Now, you listen to me,” says Ove calmly while he carefully closes the door. “You’ve given birth to two children and quite soon you’ll be squeezing out a third. You’ve come here from a land far away and most likely you fled war and persecution and all sorts of other nonsense. You’ve learned a new language and got yourself an education and you’re holding together a family of obvious incompetents. And I’ll be damned if I’ve seen you afraid of a single bloody thing in this world before now.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“It is difficult to admit that one is wrong. Particularly when one has been wrong for a very long time.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“The child that was human civilization had opened the door to her home and glanced outside. The endless night terrified her so much that she shuddered against the expansive and profound darkness, and shut the door firmly.”
― Liu Cixin, Death's End

“They say God is good all the time. Seem he also likes irony.”
― P. Djèlí Clark, Ring Shout

“Lowly, uncivilized stock. ‘I see.’ ‘But that doesn’t mean you,’ Professor Chakravarti said quickly. ‘You’re raised properly, and all that. Wonderfully diligent, I don’t expect that will be a problem.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“But it doesn’t. I know it doesn’t! She’s not the slightest bit religious; I mean, she’s civilized—’ He whistled. ‘That’s a loaded word, Letty.”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“You have such a great fear of freedom, brother. It’s shackling you. You’ve identified so hard with the colonizer, you think any threat to them is a threat to you. When are you going to realize you can’t be one of them?”
― R.F. Kuang, Babel

“No hay paz cuando una familia has split itself into pieces, even for one another.”
― Jennifer Givhan, Salt Bones

“Acting all sanctimonious while spouting bad info was a terrible way to win a debate, but a great way to piss people off.”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“In many ways, the idea of a shared stock of genes drifting through the galaxy is far easier to accept than the daunting notion that none of us may ever have the intellectual capacity to understand how life truly works.”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“They had only done to us what we had planned to do to them. That was the moment in which I no longer knew who the animals were.”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“As you said, he had everything. That made him feel safe and powerful. People can do terrible things when they feel safe and powerful. Your father had probably gotten his way for so long that he thought he was untouchable, and that is a dangerous way for a person to feel.”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“This means we matter. We’re worth something.’ And I said, ‘Of course you’re worth something. Everyone is worth something.’ And he said, ‘But now I know the galaxy thinks so, too.”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“No, he could not trust them, any of them. But he could hate them. That came easily enough.”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“The people we remember are the ones who decided how our maps should be drawn. Nobody remembers who built the roads.”
― Becky Chambers, The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet

“Life is terrifying. None of us have a rule book. None of us know what we’re doing here. So, the easiest way to stare reality in the face and not utterly lose your shit is to believe that you have control over it. If you believe you have control, then you believe that you’re at the top. And if you’re at the top, then people who aren’t like you . . . well, they’ve got to be somewhere lower, right?”
― Becky Chambers, A Closed and Common Orbit

“It didn’t seem fair for a man to mourn someone abundantly that he had loved so miserly.”
― S.A. Cosby, Razorblade Tears

“You know, we’ve been neighbors for five years now. When I first came around here you had a Sam Elliott thing going on. Now you look like Sam Elliott’s granddad.”
― S.A. Cosby, Razorblade Tears

“You know, we’ve been neighbors for five years now. When I first came around here you had a Sam Elliott thing going on. Now you look like Sam Elliott’s granddad.” “Gee thanks, Margo. Maybe I should go get a dog so you can kick it,” Buddy Lee said.”
― S.A. Cosby, Razorblade Tears

“The bikes surrounded the car like a crowd watching a busker.”
― S.A. Cosby, Razorblade Tears

“This is your life. You don’t need to believe their stories. Those are their narratives.”
― Elliot Page, Pageboy: A Memoir

“But the answer was in the silence, the answer would only come when I chose to listen.”
― Elliot Page, Pageboy: A Memoir