Dakota > Dakota's Quotes

“We don't have a plan, we just do our best to get through the day, because there'll be another one coming along tomorrow.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“Boats that stay in the harbor are safe, sweetheart, but that's not what boats were built for.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“We give those we love nicknames, because love requires a word that belongs to us alone.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

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

“This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it’s always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“But Gideon was experiencing one powerful emotion: being sick of everyone’s shit.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

“For as much as I hate the cemetery, I’ve been grateful it’s here, too. I miss my wife. It’s easier to miss her at a cemetery, where she’s never been anything but dead, than to miss her in all the places where she was alive.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“To assert as truth that which has no meaning is the core mission of humanity.”
― Tom King, The Vision, Vol. 1: Little Worse Than a Man

“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

“Anyone, Eliza is thinking, who describes dying as ‘slipping away’ or ‘peaceful’ has never witnessed it happen. Death is violent, death is a struggle. The body clings to life, as ivy to a wall, and will not easily let go, will not surrender its grip without a fight.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet

“Every life has its kernel, its hub, its epicentre, from which everything flows out, to which everything returns.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet

“What is given may be taken away, at any time. Cruelty and devastation wait for you around corners, inside coffers, behind doors: they can leap out at you at any time, like a thief or brigand. The trick is never to let down your guard. Never think you are safe. Never take for granted that your children's hearts beat, that they sup milk, that they draw breath, that they walk and speak and smile and argue and play. Never for a moment forget they may be gone, snatched from you, in the blink of an eye, borne away from you like thistledown.”
― Maggie O'Farrell, Hamnet

“One flesh, one end, bitch.”
― Tamsyn Muir, Gideon the Ninth

“Parents sacrifice their lives for their children. Then children become parents and sacrifice their own lives. And so all is sacrificed and nothing is gained. Life, then becomes the pursuit of an unobtainable purpose by absurd means.”
― Tom King, The Vision, Vol. 2: Little Better Than a Beast

“Damn real live people, getting in the way of peaceful ideals.”
― John Scalzi, Old Man's War

“As a heartless killing machine, I was a terrible failure.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“I was young and love to me was a fuse that was lit, not a garden that was grown. Love was not concerned with any deep knowledge of its object, of their wants and dreams, but mainly with the joy felt in their presence and the sickness felt in their departure.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer

“I liked the imaginary people on the entertainment feed way more than I liked real ones, but you can’t have one without the other.”
― Martha Wells, All Systems Red

“All of these fanatics were white. They took slavery as a personal insult or affront, a stain upon their name. They had seen women carried off to fancy, or watched as a father was stripped and beaten in front of his child, or seen whole families pinned like hogs into rail-cars, steam-boats, and jails. Slavery humiliated them, because it offended a basic sense of goodness that they believed themselves to possess. And when their cousins perpetrated the base practice, it served to remind them how easily they might do the same. They scorned their barbaric brethren, but they were brethren all the same. So their opposition was a kind of vanity, a hatred of slavery that far outranked any love of the slave.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer

“There was no peace in slavery, for every day under the rule of another is a day of war.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Water Dancer

“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

“Maybe we forget so that we can go on.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“It is not enough to be loved by your mother. It is a good start, and you wouldn't want to do without, and it helps, but is not enough. You need also the love of your community, the love of friends and admirers, the love of strangers who don't know you but still wish you well, the love that comes from passion and from commitment and from someone who will never, never betray you and not just because they're related to you. You need more love. We all need more love.”
― Laurie Frankel, One Two Three

“He has wondered lately if that's all living really is—one long goodbye to those we love.”
― Blake Crouch, Recursion

“He has made peace with the idea that part of life is facing your failures, and sometimes those failures are people you once loved.”
― Blake Crouch, Recursion

“So much of who we are is what we remember and retell,”
― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

“Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe; it gives life back to those who no longer exist.”
― Arkady Martine, A Memory Called Empire

“I think it’s civilization makes us violent. We infect each other.”
― Charlotte McConaghy, Once There Were Wolves

“There are languages without words and violence is one of them.”
― Charlotte McConaghy, Once There Were Wolves

“Imagination, of course, can open any door - turn the key and let terror walk right in.”
― Truman Capote, In Cold Blood