Eva Woods > Quotes

“I think we should all live as if we are dying too – because we are, make no mistake. We should live as if we’re dying at some unspecified but possibly quite soon time. We can’t expect every day to be happy, and there’ll always be sickness and heartache and sadness, but we should never put up with a sad or a boring or a depressing day, just for the sake of it. None of us have time for that, whether we have a hundred days left or a hundred thousand.”
― Eva Woods, How to be Happy

“You can’t always pinpoint the precise moment that your life goes wrong. Most of the time it creeps up on you, year by year, moment by moment, until one day you look around and realise you’re so far from who you used to be you don’t even feel like the same person. It’s usually a gradual collapse, sneaking – a stone there, a pebble here; a slow erosion of who you are, bit by bit, piece by piece.”
― Eva Woods, How to be Happy

“Life isn’t about avoiding the storm; it’s about learning to dance in the rain. Where’s your sense of adventure?”
― Eva Woods, How to be Happy

“Because. Cupcakes make everything a little better. Except for type 2 diabetes, I guess.”
― Eva Woods, Something Like Happy

“How about a hundred days of doing our best to be alive-- even if it's sad, or ordinary, and we want to cry most of the time? That's what living is, I think. Letting it all in. The happy days, the sad days, the angry days. Being awake to it.”
― Eva Woods, Something Like Happy

“It’s not about beauty,’ Polly lectured. ‘There’s hundreds of different ways to look amazing. It’s just about caring for yourself. If your hair is all greasy and your hands are sore and cracked, how can you feel good?”
― Eva Woods, How to be Happy

“You showed me that when something is really shit, it's ok to be sad. It's not a disease you have to cure. You can just... be sad.”
― Eva Woods, Something Like Happy

“They say in our lives we'll meet something like eighty thousand people. Most of them just in passing, sitting beside them on a bus, buying a latte from them, overtaking them too fast on the motorway. Others will become friends, lovers, family. Some will stay in our lives forever, and some will be swept away by the flow of life. But we touch all of these people in some way, tiny or huge, making more of a difference than any of us can imagine.”
― Eva Woods, The Inbetween Days

“I want to show it's possible to be happy and enjoy life, even if things seem awful. Did you know that, after a few years, lottery winners go back to the exact same levels of happiness as before they won? And people in serious accidents do, too, once they've adjusted to their changed lives? Happiness is a state of mind, Annie.”
― Eva Woods, Something Like Happy

“How to Obtain Power of Attorney. This looks interesting.” Was that sarcasm? A slim pamphlet with a sad stock photo of someone holding an old person’s hand. When really getting power of attorney was more like grabbing that old person’s hand and tying it to their side before they could hurt themselves. Or someone else.”
― Eva Woods, Something Like Happy

“Polly shrugged. “We’re not really built to understand death, I don’t think. I sometimes imagine what it would be like to go up to people on the tube, or in the street, and tap them on the arm and say, ‘Excuse me, do you realize you’re going to die? Maybe not today or tomorrow but one day.’ All those people rushing about to meetings and Pret and the gym. I wonder what would happen if they suddenly realized it. Let it sink in. Wouldn’t you drop everything and do the one thing you’d always dreamed of? Jump out of a plane. Quit your job. Tell that person you fancy him.”
― Eva Woods, Something Like Happy

“There was no one like her on the whole of the planet, no one who had ever lived or ever would. There was not a single other person with her fingerprints, with her memories, with the blood beating in her veins. She was herself, and she was alive right now, despite everything.”
― Eva Woods, Something Like Happy