Carol > Carol's Quotes

“You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.”
― Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air

“Maybe it's better to have gotten it right and been happy for one day instead of living a lifetime of wrongs.”
― Adam Silvera, They Both Die at the End

“But no matter what choices we make - solo or together - our finish line remains the same … No matter how we choose to live, we both die at the end.”
― Adam Silvera, They Both Die at the End

“I wasted all those yesterdays and am completely out of tomorrows.”
― Adam Silvera, They Both Die at the End

“The normal world has no room for exceptions and always quietly eliminates foreign objects. Anyone who is lacking is disposed of.

So that’s why I need to be cured. Unless I’m cured, normal people will expurgate me. Finally I understood why my family had tried so hard to fix me.”
― Sayaka Murata, Convenience Store Woman

“Sometimes you need to scorch everything to the ground, and start over. After the burning the soil is richer, and new things can grow. People are like that, too. They start over. They find a way.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“Most of the time, everyone deserves more than one chance. We all do things we regret now and then. You just have to carry them with you.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“It came, over and over, down to this: What made someone a mother? Was it biology alone, or was it love?”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“I don't have a plan, I'm afraid, but then, no one really does, no matter what they say.”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“To those out on their own paths, setting little fires”
― Celeste Ng, Little Fires Everywhere

“One of the strange things about adulthood is that you are your current self, but you are also all the selves you used to be, the ones you grew out of but can't ever quite get rid of.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“You can't see the future coming--not the terrors, for sure, but you also can't see the wonders that are coming, the moments of light-soaked joy that await each of us.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“It's no wonder we worry about the end of the world. Worlds end all the time.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“In the darkness, two shadows, reaching through the hopeless, heavy dusk. Their hands meet, and light spills in a flood like a hundred golden urns pouring out of the sun.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“Name one hero who was happy.”
― Madeline Miller, The Song of Achilles

“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

“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

“At the end of the day, whether one returns to the past or travels to the future, the present doesn't change.”
― Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold

“She wanted to do things without having to worry what others thought.
She simply lived for her freedom.”
― Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold

“But Kazu still goes on believing that, no matter what difficulties people face, they will always have the strength to overcome them. It just takes heart. And if the chair can change someone’s heart, it clearly has its purpose.”
― Toshikazu Kawaguchi, Before the Coffee Gets Cold

“It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“I must say a word about fear. It is life's only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unnerving ease. It begins in your mind, always ... so you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don't, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“Life is so beautiful that death has fallen in love with it, a jealous, possessive love that grabs at what it can. But life leaps over oblivion lightly, losing only a thing or two of no importance, and gloom is but the passing shadow of a cloud...”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“When you've suffered a great deal in life, each additional pain is both unbearable and trifling.”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi

“That's what fiction is about, isn't it, the selective transforming of reality? The twisting of it to bring out its essence?”
― Yann Martel, Life of Pi