Дивa > Дивa's Quotes

“You only need one ray of light to chase all the shadows away," she said to him once, when he asked her why she had to be so upbeat the whole time.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“You don't fool me, darling,"she said with a playful little smile and crept into his big arms. "You're dancing on the inside, Ove, when no one's watching. And I'll always love you for that. Whether you like it or not.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“He knew very well that some people thought he was nothing but a grumpy old soul without any faith in people. But to put it bluntly, that was because people had never given him reason to see it another way.
Because a time comes in every man's life when he decides what sort of man he's going to be: the kind who lets other people walk over him, or not.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“And if you don’t know the story, you don’t know the man.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“And then she left him alone in a world where he no longer understood the language.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“What sort of love is it if you hand someone over when it gets difficult?” she cries, her voice shaking with sorrow. “Abandon someone when there’s resistance? Tell me what sort of love that is!”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“It is difficult to admit that one is wrong. Particularly when one has been wrong for a very long time.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“The smart people aren't always good," Reg said heavily, "so the good people have to be smart.”
― Katie Kennedy, What Goes Up

“If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.”
― Katie Kennedy, What Goes Up

“The truth of 'winter' is not the season of winter. Truth is a rhetorical concept and natural things just are.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“He felt a wave of optimism lift him up, a renewed faith that the world could deliver unanticipated wonders.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“... the simplicity of pure emotion saves one from the complicated thoughts that can lead to damnation.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“Because, in your stories, you seem to understand that true dramatic moments come not when a character must choose between right and wrong but when he must choose between two wrongs.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“Farmers know that there are goodly harvests which ripen late, especially when the grain is strong.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“[...] let it be said that I am the most reverent shaman in the New World, about other matters spiritual and divine, let others be the judge! [...] soon the true literature of this sleepy nation will shine out from the starry constellations of the Berkshires.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“My dear Hawthorne, I would sleep my life away if, by doing so, I could dream myself into an endless converstion with you; and though I am off to New York now, we will soon lift the eternal chalice of dreams to each other’s lips and drink deeply.”
― Mark Beauregard

“But how could such a great admiration be wrong ? How could it be a sin to wonder the halls of eachother’s imaginations together, discovering and building new rooms there ?”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“Because I have eyes to see, as well, and if you continue to carry on so brazenly, others will be forced out of their blindness. You will end up tarred and feathered, or worse.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“A book is not a secret messsage.”
“Some books are.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“I have just dine on a savory dish that I believe you will find delicious, and I am writing to commend it to you. I am calling it Hope.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“When your appetite is sharpened by persistent failure and frosty despair, a warm bowl of Hope is just the thing to set your mind and spirit right.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“This fever of longing is not love, he thought, it is the opposite of love. It is the separation from love that burns like the fires of hell.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“This is how beauty must be, he thought, not pretty and safe but unbearable and blank and fierce with the horror of isolation.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“The only thing that was real was that thing that seemed least substansial to the senses: love. That was the grandeur of humankind - that one could willingly throw off the hard - won developments of logic and history and everything that had made human beings exceptional in the world - throw off everything in order to return to the dreamy insensibility of love, the one thing that could not be defined in material terms and therefore escaped the relentless negative calculus of entropy. Love and love alone was eternal”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“[...] wouldn’t it be a relief to know all the answers, so as not to have to write stories about the questions ?
...
“How can one decide, with the mind, whom to love? And if the lover hasn’t decide love, then it must be inspired by some other agency [...]”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“To be honest with you, Melville, I sometimes don’t have the faintest idea what I’m trying to say with my damned allegories. I feel as if I’m writing with invisible ink.”
...
[...] Even if the world presses it by, you shall have at least one avid reader who will enjoy it immensely. And I am a special reader, you must remember: I can read between the lines on the page and I see invisible ink, as well. Nothing escapes me!”
― Mark Beauregard

“If we are to be friends,” Herman said, “you must not say such things to me. You know that I love you, and you cannot toy with my affections. I will go mad.”
...
“I know that you are unlike anyone I have ever met. When I am around you, I feel at liberty to express myself completely as I see fit, beacause I am quite sure you will understand me. It’s a freedom I have longed for, but I also know that what you want from me, I cannot give.”
― Mark Beauregard

“You wish to be my lover. That's the name for it. But I am a stranger to that form of love."
...
"I am not as steady as I may appear," said Hawthorne.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“You are so very far from perfect, but when it comes to the world and to me, you will only accept absolute love, and that’s why you always feel unsatisfied, most of all with yourself, because you are incapable of the thing you desire most. That is why it isn’t easy to love you, but also why I do.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story

“He had never heard the term absolute love before. Unconditional love, yes – an equally impossible concept – but absolute? He turned it over his mind: it seemed more aggressive than grace, more demanding than acceptance, the complete opposite of resignation, something austere and grand – even literary.”
― Mark Beauregard, The Whale: A Love Story