a > a's Quotes

“You cannot talk when you first arrive." He smiled. "It helps you listen.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“Had he known his death was imminent, he might have gone somewhere else. Instead, he did what we all do. He went about his dull routine as if all the days in the world were still to come.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“First, you have to push people's boundaries and not feel bad about it. No one is going to give you anything id you don't ask for it. You tried. You were told no. Get over it.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“Heartbreak is loss. Divorce is just a piece of paper.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“It's on the house", he said, which I thought was the dumbest thing, because if there is anyone that should be getting free food, it isn't rich people.”
― Taylor Jenkins Reid, The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo

“I want the world to know that you won't get anywhere if you aren't besharam.”
― Neena Gupta, Sach Kahun Toh: An Autobiography

“That's the thing. Sometimes when you sacrifice something precious, you're not really losing it. You're just passing it on to someone else.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“Each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.”
― Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven

“There is a great affinity between trees and men. We grow at much the same pace, if we are not hurt or starved or cut down. In our youth we are resplendent creatures, and in our declining years we stoop a little, we remember, we stretch our brittle limbs in the sun, and then, with a sigh, we shed our last leaves.”
― Ruskin Bond, BOYHOOD DREAMS AND OTHER TALES

“Our skin, I thought, is like the leaf of a tree, young and green and shiny; then it gets darker and heavier, sometimes spotted with disease, sometimes eaten away; then fading, yellow and red, then falling, crumbling into dust or feeding the flames of fire.”
― Ruskin Bond, BOYHOOD DREAMS AND OTHER TALES

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”
― Oscar Wilde

“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. 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

“Never trust people who don't have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“When children are young you think it will pass, the guilty feeling you get in your stomach when you leave home each morning. But it never does. So she has their music collections on her phone, lists of songs that have been selected because each is the sort that makes one of the children shout "LOUDER! LOUDER!" when it comes on the radio.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“In his world it takes more than hormones to turn boys into men.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“We love winners, even though they’re very rarely particularly likeable people. They’re almost always obsessive and selfish and inconsiderate. That doesn’t matter. We forgive them. We like them while they’re winning.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“People feel pain. And it shrinks their souls.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“On the biggest day of his life he is the loneliest boy on earth.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“Sad eyes, wild heart, nothing but trouble lies ahead for that sort.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“A community is the sum of its choices, and when two of our children said different things, we believed him. Because that was easier, because if the girl was lying our lives could carry on as usual.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“She has read that support groups for victims of rape call themselves "survivors". Because that's what they do each day; they survive what they've been subjected to, over and over again. Ana wonders if there's a word for everyone else, the people who let it happen. People are already prepared to destroy each other's worlds just to avoid having to admit that many of us bear small portions of a collective guilt for a boy's actions. It's easier if you deny it, if you tell yourself that it's an "isolated incident".”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“The best thing about nature is that it isn't nostalgic; rocks and trees don't give a damn about their previous owners.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Everything has a breaking point, and even though people always say that a 'joy shared is a joy doubled,' we seem to insist on believing that the opposite is true of sorrow. Perhaps that isn't actually the case. Two drowning people with lead weights around their ankles may not be each other's salvation; if they hold hands, they'll just sink twice as fast. In the end, the weight of carrying each other's broken hearts becomes unbearable.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“It's hard to admit that we've been wrong. And the bigger the mistake, the harder it is.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Don't you ever watch wildlife documentaries? Wild animals are always at their most dangerous when they've been wounded.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Anxiety. It’s such a peculiar thing. Almost everyone knows what it feels like, yet none of us can describe it. Maya looks at herself in the mirror, wonders why it can’t be seen on the outside. Not even on x-rays— how does that work? How can something that bangs away at us so horribly hard on the inside not show up on the pictures as black scars, scorched into our skeletons? How can the pain she feels not be visible in the mirror?”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Unfairness is a far more natural state in the world than fairness.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“... Benji, probably knew deep down that he was never the sort of person who would get a happy ending. Obviously we still hoped. Dear God, how we hoped. Naive dreams are love's last line of defence, so somehow we always convince ourselves that no terrible tragedies will ever afflict those we love, and that our people will succeed in escaping fate.”
― Fredrik Backman, The Winners

“Sore losers can become aggressive.”
― Fredrik Backman, The Winners

“But not all animals want revenge, we're the only ones who do that, waiting in the darkness all night so we can get back at someone for something. Only we do that.”
― Fredrik Backman, The Winners