kat > kat's Quotes

“Originally, he'd wanted to focus his work on the convict leasing system that had stolen years off of his great-grandpa H's life, but the deeper into the research he got, the bigger the project got. How could he talk about Great-Grandpa H's story without also talking about his grandma Willie and the millions of other black people who had migrated north, fleeing Jim Crow? And if he mentioned the Great Migration, he'd have to talk about the cities that took that flock in. He'd have to talk about Harlem, And how could he talk about Harlem without mentioning his father's heroin addiction - the stints in prison, the criminal record? And if he was going to talk about heroin in Harlem in the '60s, wouldn't he also have to talk about crack everywhere in the '80s? And if he wrote about crack, he'd inevitably be writing, to, about the "war on drugs." And if he started talking about the war on drugs, he'd be talking about how nearly half of the black men he grew up with were on their way either into or out of what had become the harshest prison system in the world. And if he talked about why friends from his hood were doing five-year bids for possession of marijuana when nearly all the white people he'd gone to college with smoked it openly every day, he'd get so angry that he'd slam the research book on the table of the beautiful but deadly silent Lane Reading Room of Green Library of Stanford University. And if he slammed the book down, then everyone in the room would stare and all they would see would be his skin and his anger, and they'd think they knew something about him, and it would be the same something that had justified putting his great-grandpa H in prison, only it would be different too, less obvious than it once was.”
― Yaa Gyasi, Homegoing

“Don't worry, teeny-tiny girls grow up to be the mightiest of creatures.”
― Rebekah Crane, The Upside of Falling Down

“Life is a collaborative effort. We can't do it on our own.”
― Rebekah Crane, The Upside of Falling Down

“Our teacher made us write a story about what we want to be when we're big," Noah tells him.
"What did you write?"
"I wrote that I wanted to concentrate on being little first."
"That's a very good answer."
"Isn't it? I would rather be old than a grown-up. All grown-ups are angry, it's just children and old people who laugh."
"Did you write that?"
"Yes."
"What did your teacher say?"
"She said I hadn't understood the task."
"And what did you say?"
"I said she hadn't understood my answer.”
― Fredrik Backman, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer

“It's an awful thing to miss someone who's still here.”
― Fredrik Backman, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer

“I only had you for the blink of an eye,” he says.
She laughs. “You had me an entire lifetime. All of mine.”
“That wasn’t enough”
― Fredrik Backman, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer

“They were sixteen and even the snow was happy that morning, falling soap-bubble light and landing on cold cheeks as though the flakes were gently trying to wake someone they loved. She stood in front of him with January in her hair, and he was lost.”
― Fredrik Backman, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer

“Tell me that that’s what it’s like to fall in love, like you don’t have room for yourself in your own feet.”
― Fredrik Backman, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer

“There's the church were you became mine. There's the house that became ours.”
― Fredrik Backman, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer

“I always knew who I was with you. You were my shortcut”
― Fredrik Backman, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer

“Never in my life have I asked myself how I fell in love with her, Noahnoah. Only the other way around.”
― Fredrik Backman, And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer

“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