Renée Williams > Renée's Quotes

“Learn this from me. Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“Everyone has a thousand wishes before a tragedy, but just one afterward.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“Religion is something between you and other people; it’s full of interpretations and theories and opinions. But faith . . . that’s just between you and God.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“She’s fifteen, above the age of consent, and he’s seventeen, but he’s still “the boy” in every conversation. She’s “the young woman”.

Words are not small things.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“What an uncomfortable, terrible source of shame it is for the world that the victim is so often the one left with the most empathy for others.”
― 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

“What you create, others can destroy. Create anyway. Because in the end, it is between you and God. It was never between you and anyone else anyway.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“It occurred to me now that when we let Resistance hold us back, we’re not the only ones who suffer. Other people lose out, too.”
― Jennifer Fulwiler, One Beautiful Dream: The Rollicking Tale of Family Chaos, Personal Passions, and Saying Yes to Them Both

“I thought again of those messages that attack women, from both within and without, that whisper that we shouldn’t pursue our dreams because we’re not talented enough or we’re too old or too young or we don’t have the perfect lives for it. It occurred to me now that when we let Resistance hold us back, we’re not the only ones who suffer. Other people lose out, too.”
― Jennifer Fulwiler, One Beautiful Dream: The Rollicking Tale of Family Chaos, Personal Passions, and Saying Yes to Them Both

“You can’t put your own life on hold over the long term; eventually, you’ll reach a breaking point where you simply have to take care of yourself. And if you perceive that tending to your own needs can never go hand-in-hand with serving, you’ll stop serving.”
― Jennifer Fulwiler, One Beautiful Dream: The Rollicking Tale of Family Chaos, Personal Passions, and Saying Yes to Them Both

“Resistance is that temptation that leads you to sit back and criticize others instead of following your own life’s calling; it’s the lost running shoes and malfunctioning alarms that make it so hard to start that new workout routine; it’s the fights that break out among well-meaning people in a powerful ministry at church; it’s the force that has stopped countless artists throughout the ages, repelling them from their work like two similarly charged magnets.”
― Jennifer Fulwiler, One Beautiful Dream: The Rollicking Tale of Family Chaos, Personal Passions, and Saying Yes to Them Both

“I tried to dismiss it as an overstatement, but it kept ringing in my soul: Maybe Resistance is trying to stop women from changing the world.”
― Jennifer Fulwiler, One Beautiful Dream: The Rollicking Tale of Family Chaos, Personal Passions, and Saying Yes to Them Both

“Remember this,” he said. “Where there is no unity, there is no God. God is always calling us to connection, to unity, and if we don’t have that, we are not walking with God.”
― Jennifer Fulwiler, One Beautiful Dream: The Rollicking Tale of Family Chaos, Personal Passions, and Saying Yes to Them Both

“Culture is a powerful force that influences our perceptions, our mindsets and even our domestic and foreign policies. The rich, messy complexity of 1,400 years of Islamic civilization and 1.6 billion Muslims has been reduced to token stereotypes. We are either avatars of destruction or the good Muslim who helps the national security narrative. But the overwhelming majority of us live in the giant middle—the grey zone—where impressions exist in more colors than just black and white.” *”
― Rabia Chaudry, Adnan's Story: The Search for Truth and Justice After Serial

“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

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

“The worst thing we know about other people is that we’re dependent upon them. That their actions affect our lives. Not just the people we choose, the people we like, but all the rest of them: the idiots. You who stand in front of us in every line, who can’t drive properly, who like bad television shows and talk too loud in restaurants and whose kids infect our kids with the winter vomiting bug at preschool. You who park badly and steal our jobs and vote for the wrong party. You also influence our lives, every second.”
― 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

“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

“What does it take to be a good parent? Not much. Just everything. Absolutely everything.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

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

“Reading and naps, two of life's greatest pleasures, go especially well together.”
― Will Schwalbe, Books for Living

“Books speak to us thoughtfully, one at a time. They demand our attention. And they demand that we briefly put aside our own beliefs and prejudices and listen to someone else's. There's one questions I think we should ask one another a lot more often, and that's "what are you reading?”
― Will Schwalbe, Books for Living

“Good books often answer questions you didn't even know you wanted to ask”
― Will Schwalbe, Books for Living

“I used to say that the greatest gift you could ever give anyone is a book. But I don't say that anymore because I no longer think it's true. I now say that a book is the second greatest gift. I've come to believe that the greatest gift you can give people is to take the time to talk with them about a book you've shared. A book is a great gift; the gift of your interest and attention is even greater.”
― Will Schwalbe, Books for Living

“Lin Yutang also believed that reading is an art. One chapter of the Importance of Living is devoted to "the Art of Reading." Lin writes that, "the man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time and space. His life falls into a set routine; he is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and acquaintances, and he sees only what happens in his immediate neighborhood.”
― Will Schwalbe, Books for Living

“As for me, I'm on a search and have been, I now realize, all my life - to find books to help me make sense of the world, to help me become a better person, to help me get my head around the big questions that I have and answer some of the small ones while I'm at it.”
― Will Schwalbe, Books for Living

“Isn't it nice to think that tomorrow is a new day with no mistakes in it yet?”
― L.M. Montgomery

“It's been my experience that you can nearly always enjoy things if you make up your mind firmly that you will.”
― Lucy Maud Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables

“It's not always wrong to quit. We should never hold onto a mistake just because we spent a lot of time making it.”
― Richard Paul Evans, The Broken Road