Dan Insinna > Dan's Quotes

“...it is sad, of course, to forget.
But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten.
To remember when no one else does.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“But books, like people, die. They die in fires or floods or in the mouths of worms or at the whims of tyrants. If they are not safeguarded, they go out of the world. And when a book goes out of the world, the memory dies a second death.”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

“we are all beautiful even as we are all part of the problem, and that to be a part of the problem is to be human”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

“Each morning comes along and you assume it will be similar enough to the previous one—that you will be safe, that your family will be alive, that you will be together, that life will remain mostly as it was. Then a moment arrives and everything changes.”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

“what's so beautiful about a fool is that a fool never knows when to give up”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

“strange how suffering can look beautiful if you get far enough away”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

“Why is it so hard to transcend the identities assigned to us when we were young?”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

“Why can't healing happen as quickly as wounding?”
― Anthony Doerr, Cloud Cuckoo Land

“Open your eyes and see what you can with them before they close forever.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“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

“So how, children, does the brain, which lives without a spark of light, build for us a world full of light?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“When I lost my sight, Werner, people said I was brave. When my father left, people said I was brave. 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

“Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground, and start over. After the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too. They start over. They find a way.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“The things that go unsaid are often the things that eat at you—whether because you didn't get to have your say, or because the other person never got to hear you and really wanted to.”
― Celeste Ng, Everything I Never Told You

“You’ll always be sad about this,” Mia said softly. “But it doesn’t mean you made the wrong choice. It’s just something that you have to carry.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“Food is one of the best things about being alive. Not just food. Good food.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Take a drink every time you hear you’re not enough.
Not the right fit.
Not the right look.
Not the right focus.
Not the right drive.
Not the right time.
Not the right job.
Not the right path.
Not the right future.
Not the right present.
Not the right you.
Not you.
(Not me?)
There’s just something missing.
From us.
What could I have done?
Nothing. It’s just…
(Who you are.)
I didn’t think we were serious.
(You’re just too…
…sweet.
…soft.
…sensitive.)
I just don’t see us ending up together.
I met someone.
I’m sorry
It’s not you.
Swallow it down.
We’re not on the same page.
We’re not in the same place.
It’s not you.
We can’t help who we fall in love with.
(And who we don’t.)
You’re such a good friend.
You’re going to make the right girl happy.
You deserve better.
Let’s stay friends.
I don’t want to lose you.
It’s not you.
I’m sorry.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“A dreamer,” scorns her mother.

“A dreamer,” mourns her father.

“A dreamer,” warns Estele.

Still, it does not seem such a bad word.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Nothing is all good or all bad,” she says. “Life is so much messier than that.”
― V.E. Schwab, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

“Life is a series of slamming doors. We make irrevocable decisions every day. A twelve-second delay, a slip of the tongue, and suddenly your life is on a new road.”
― Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time

“You can’t trauma-proof life, and you can’t hurt-proof your relationships. You have to accept you will cause harm to yourself and others. But you can also fuck up, really badly, and not learn anything from it except that you fucked up. It’s the same with oppression. You don’t gain any special knowledge from being marginalized. But you do gain something from stepping outside your hurt and examining the scaffolding of your oppression.”
― Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time

“If you ever fall in love, you’ll be a person who was in love for the rest of your life.”
― Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time

“Forgiveness, which takes you back to the person you were and lets you reset them. Hope, which exists in a future in which you are new. Forgiveness and hope are miracles. They let you change your life. They are time-travel.”
― Kaliane Bradley, The Ministry of Time

“Hell is the absence of the people you long for.”
― Emily St. John Mandel, Station Eleven

“When you're happy, you don't question how that came to be.”
― Drew Magary, The Hike

“There is no simple explanation for anything important any of us do, and the human tragedy, or the human irony, consists in the necessity of living with the consequences of actions performed under the pressure of compulsions so obscure we do not and cannot understand them.”
― Hugh MacLennan, The Watch that Ends the Night

“Love, sought as an escape from the burden of the self, turns rapidly into a captivity.”
― Hugh MacLennan, The Watch that Ends the Night

“There comes a day in every man's life when he stops looking forward and starts looking back.
Because of my father's circumstances, I had a sad commentary on life, but I now understood that he was offering me his own gift, one that only time can provide. He was offering me the gift of perspective. My father was telling me that while we tend to remember the dramatic incidents that change history---Armstrong's walk on the moon, Nixon's resignation, and the Loma Prieta earthquake---we live for the quiet, intimate moments that mark not our calendars, but our hearts: The day we marry. The days our children are born. Their first step. Their first word. Their first day of school. And when our children grow, we remember those moments with a touch of melancholy: the day they get their driver's license, the day we drive them to college, the day they marry, and the day they have their children.
And the cycle begins anew.
We realize it is in those quiet moments that each of us has the ability to make our lives extraordinary.”
― Robert Dugoni, The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell

“But to my mother—I suspect to all mothers—their little boys will always be their little boys, no matter how old those boys become.”
― Robert Dugoni, The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell

“Life is either a collision of random events, like billiard balls during a break careening off and into one another, or if you are so inclined to believe, our predetermined fate—what my mother took such great comfort in calling God’s will.”
― Robert Dugoni, The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell