Skirsch > Skirsch's Quotes

“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“They say that a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“That's the power of literature, you know, it can act like little love letters between two people who can only explain their feelings by pointing at other people's.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“We give those we love nicknames, because love requires a word that belongs to us alone.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“We skip the moments like stones.”
― Markus Zusak, Bridge of Clay

“A murderer should probably do many things, but he should never, under any circumstances, come home.”
― Markus Zusak, Bridge of Clay

“There are hundreds of thoughts per every word spoken, and that's if they're spoken at all.”
― Markus Zusak, Bridge of Clay

“Never trust people who don't have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.”
― 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

“It doesn't take long to persuade each other to stop seeing a person as a person. And when enough people are quiet for long enough, a handful of voices can give the impression that everyone is screaming.”
― 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

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

“Death does that to us, it’s like a phone call, you always remember exactly what you should have said the moment you hang up.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Unfairness is a far more natural state in the world than fairness.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“This hurts too much to touch with words.”
― Fredrik Backman, The Winners

“We fool ourselves that we can protect the people we love, because if we accepted the truth we’d never let them out of our sight.”
― Fredrik Backman, The Winners

“even if I’m dying, until I actually die, I am still living.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“Life wasn’t about avoiding suffering.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“Autumn leaves don't fall, they fly. They take their time and wander on this their only chance to soar.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“If anyone would understand loneliness, the moon would.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“But it is not bravery; I have no choice. I wake up and live my life. Don't you do the same?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“To men like that, time was a surfeit, a barrel they watched slowly drain. When really, he thinks, it’s a glowing puddle you carry in your hands; you should spend all your energy protecting it. Fighting for it. Working so hard not to spill one single drop.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“We accept the love we think we deserve.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“And in that moment, I swear we were infinite.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“I am both happy and sad at the same time, and I'm still trying to figure out how that could be.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“We can't choose where we come from,but we can choose where we go from there.”
― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“In the immemorial style of young men under pressure, they decided to lie down for a while and waste time.”
― Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

“The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of the things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.”
― Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay

“Every universe, our own included, begins in conversation.”
― Michael Chabon, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay