Kelly > Kelly's Quotes

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

“Loving someone is like moving into a house," Sonja used to say. "At first you fall in love with all the new things, amazed every morning that all this belongs to you, as if fearing that someone would suddenly come rushing in through the door to explain that a terrible mistake had been made, you weren't actually supposed to live in a wonderful place like this. Then over the years the walls become weathered, the wood splinters here and there, and you start to love that house not so much because of all its perfection, but rather for its imperfections. You get to know all the nooks and crannies. How to avoid getting the key caught in the lock when it's cold outside. Which of the floorboards flex slightly when one steps on them or exactly how to open the wardrobe doors without them creaking. These are the little secrets that make it your home.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Reading good books ruins you for enjoying bad books.”
― Mary Ann Shaffer, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

“If there is love, smallpox scars are as pretty as dimples. I'll love your face no matter what it looks like. Because it's yours.”
― Stephen King, 11/22/63

“One benefit of Summer was that each day we had more light to read by.”
― Jeannette Walls, The Glass Castle

“Good fiction’s job is to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.”
― David Foster Wallace

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

“Many boys will bring you flowers. But someday you'll meet a boy who will learn your favorite flower, your favorite song, your favorite sweet. And even if he is too poor to give you any of them, it won't matter because he will have taken the time to know you as no one else does. Only that boy earns your heart.”
― Leigh Bardugo, Six of Crows

“I cannot sleep unless I am surrounded by books.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“This life is difficult. We lose fathers, brothers, mothers, songbirds and pieces of ourselves. Whips strike the innocent, honors go to the guilty, and there is too much loneliness. I would be a fool to pray for my children to escape all of that. Ask for too much and it might actually turn out worse. But I can pray for small things, like fertile fields, a mother’s love, a child’s smile—a life that’s less bitter than sweet.”
― Nadia Hashimi, The Pearl that Broke Its Shell

“Fate is like a strange, unpopular restaurant filled with odd little waiters who bring you things you never asked for and don't always like.”
― Lemony Snicket

“When all else fails, give up and go to the library.”
― Stephen King, 11/22/63

“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

“Nothing is so painful to the human mind as a great and sudden change.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, Frankenstein

“Fiction is the lie through which we tell the truth.”
― Albert Camus

“When he shall die,
Take him and cut him out in little stars,
And he will make the face of heaven so fine
That all the world will be in love with night
And pay no worship to the garish sun.”
― William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet

“Words provide a voice to our deepest feelings. I tell you, words have started and stopped wars. Words have built and lost fortunes. Words have saved and taken lives. Words have won and lost great kingdoms. Even Buddha said, 'Whatever words we utter should be chosen with care, for people will hear them and be influenced by them for good or ill.”
― Camron Wright, The Rent Collector

“I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.”
― Anne Tyler

“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

“I am not without you,
that you are with me from the moment I wake until the moment I fall asleep,
that it's you when the wind caresses me,
that it's your voice I hear in the silence,
you whom I see when I close my eyes,
you who make me laugh and sing when I know no one else is around.”
― Jan-Philipp Sendker, The Art of Hearing Heartbeats

“Just remember that Dumbo didn't need the feather; the magic was in him. ”
― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

“Ove had never been asked how he lived before he met her. But if anyone had asked him, he would have answered that he didn’t.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“You were you,
and I was I;
we were two
before our time.

I was yours
before I knew,
and you have always
been mine too.”
― Lang Leav, Love & Misadventure

“One morning you wake up with more life behind you than in front of you, not being able to understand how it’s happened.”
― Fredrik Backman, Britt-Marie var här

“Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it's often one of the great motivations for living. Some of us, in time, become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury. Some need its constant presence to even be aware of its antithesis. Others become so preoccupied with it that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival. We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“We always think there's enough time to do things with other people. Time to say things to them. And then something happens and then we stand there holding on to words like 'if'.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“I liked learning things. How numbers worked together to explain the stars. How molecules made the world. All the ugly and wonderful things people had done in the last two thousand years.”
― Bryn Greenwood, All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

“It is the most insignificant moments, where there is nothing to show, nothing to tell, that are the most beautiful.”
― Antoine Leiris, Vous n'aurez pas ma haine

“It’s scary that people can just stop loving you, you know?”
― Kristin Hannah, The Great Alone

“No one tells you it's all about to change, to be taken away. There's no proximity alert, no indication that you're standing on the precipice. And maybe that's what makes tragedy so tragic. Not just what happens, but how it happens: a sucker punch that comes at you out of nowhere, when you're least expecting it. No time to flinch or brace.”
― Blake Crouch, Dark Matter