Richa > Richa's Quotes

“Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn't through love, because love is hard, It makes demands. Hate is simple. So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that's easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe - comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“If you are honest, people may deceive you. Be honest anyway. If you are kind, people may accuse you of selfishness. Be kind anyway. All the good you do today will be forgotten by others tomorrow. Do good anyway.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“All adults have days when we feel completely drained. When we no longer know quite what we spend so much time fighting for, when reality and everyday worries overwhelm us and we wonder how much longer we’re going to be able to carry on. The wonderful thing is that we can all live through far more days like that without breaking than we think. The terrible thing is that we never know exactly how many.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“The only thing the sport gives us are moments. But what the hell is life, Peter, apart from moments?”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“Humanity has many shortcomings, but none is stronger than pride.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“The very worst events in life have that effect on a family: we always remember, more sharply than anything else, the last happy moments before everything fell apart.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“Loneliness is an invisible ailment.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“Anxiety can act as internal gravity, shrinking the soul.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“A great deal is expected of anyone who's been given a lot.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“Everyone is a hundred different things, but in other people’s eyes we usually get the chance to be only one of them.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“The complicated thing about good and bad people alike is that most of us can be both at the same time.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“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.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Sometimes people have to be allowed to have something to live for in order to survive everything else.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Anxiety. It owns us but leaves no trace.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“The best friends of our childhoods are the loves of our lives, and they break our hearts in worse ways.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“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.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Feelings are complicated. Actions are simple.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Sometimes good people do terrible things in the belief that they’re trying to protect what they love.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Life offers up these moments of joy despite everything,”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Generally I find men are a lot more concerned with limiting the freedoms of women than exercising personal freedom for themselves.”
― Sally Rooney, Normal People

“Presumably, remembered suffering never feels as bad as present suffering, even if it was really a lot worse - we can't remember how much worse it was, because remembering is weaker than experiencing.”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“I will probably continue to make poor life decisions and suffer recurrent depressive episodes”
― Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You

“sleep is the most innocent creature there is and a sleepless man
the most guilty.”
― Franz Kafka, Letters to Milena