Jas > Jas's Quotes

“But we're all anomalies in one way or another - it's what makes being alive beautiful. We're more than neat plot devices; we're contradictory and confusing, and it's wonderful. There's nothing wrong with a few contradictions, and I think you might have to embrace them, as it would already seem that there are going to be some unpredictable side effects caused by your dad being fictional.”
― Anna James, Tilly and the Bookwanderers

“People said Ove saw the world in black and white. But she was color. All the color he had.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Let God have you, and let God love you - and don’t be surprised if your heart begins to hear music you’ve never heard and your feet learn to dance as never before.”
― Max Lucado

“To love someone is like moving into a house," Sonja used to say. "At first you fall in love in everything new, you wonder every morning that this is one's own, as if they are afraid that someone will suddenly come tumbling through the door and say that there has been a serious mistake and that it simply was not meant to would live so fine. But as the years go by, the facade worn, the wood cracks here and there, and you start to love this house not so much for all the ways it is perfect in that for all the ways it is not. You become familiar with all its nooks and crannies. How to avoid that the key gets stuck in the lock if it is cold outside. Which floorboards have some give when you step on them, and exactly how to open the doors for them not to creak. That's it, all the little secrets that make it your home.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“One characteristic of racism is that children are treated like adults and adults are treated like children. Watching a parent being debased like a child is the deepest shame. I cannot count the number of times I have seen my parents condescended to or mocked by white adults. This was so customary that when my mother had any encounter with a white adult, I was always hypervigilant, ready to mediate or pull her away. To grow up Asian in America is to witness the humiliation of authority figures like your parents and to learn not to depend on them: they cannot protect you.”
― Cathy Park Hong, Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning

“People said that a single day without a dear friend could feel like three autumns.”
― Shelley Parker-Chan, She Who Became the Sun

“One of the most painful moments in a person’s life probably comes with the insight that an age has been reached when there is more to look back on than ahead. And when time no longer lies ahead of one, other things have to be lived for. Memories, perhaps. Afternoons in the sun with someone’s hand clutched in one’s own. The fragrance of flowerbeds in fresh bloom. Sundays in a café.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“But sorrow is unreliable in that way. When people don’t share it there’s a good chance that it will drive them apart instead.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“The world is full of miracles, but none greater than how far a young person can be carried by someone else’s belief in them.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends