Ida > Ida's Quotes

“We wish to be loved as we ourselves would love. Any other way makes as uncomfortable. We respond with doubt and suspicion. We misinterpret the signs. We do not understand the language. We accuse. We assert that the other person does not love us. But perhaps he merely loves us in some idiosyncratic way that we fail to recognize.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats

“When it's gone, you'll know what a gift love was. You'll suffer like this. So go back and fight to keep it.”
― Ian McEwan, Enduring Love

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

“Life is a gift full of riddles in which suffering and happiness are inextricably intertwined. Any attempt to have one without the other was simply bound to fail.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats

“You know the greatest lesson of history? It’s that history is whatever the victors say it is. That’s the lesson. Whoever wins, that’s who decides the history. We act in our own self-interest. Of course we do. Name me a person or a nation who does not. The trick is figuring out where your interests are.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“All your life you wait, and then it finally comes, and are you ready?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“How do you ever know for certain that you are doing the right thing?”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“We all come into existence as a single cell, smaller than a speck of dust. Much smaller. Divide. Multiply. Add and subtract. Matter changes hands, atoms flow in and out, molecules pivot, proteins stitch together, mitochondria send out their oxidative dictates; we begin as a microscopic electrical swarm. The lungs the brain the heart. Forty weeks later, six trillion cells get crushed in the vise of our mother’s birth canal and we howl. Then the world starts in on us.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“A real diamond is never perfect.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“It's embarrassingly plain how inadequate language is.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Some people are weak in some ways, sir. Others in other ways.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“Stones are just stones and rain is just rain and misfortune is just bad luck.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“That something so small could be so beautiful. Worth so much. Only the strongest people can turn away from feelings like that.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“The best books... are those that tell you what you know already.”
― George Orwell, 1984