olivia > olivia's Quotes

“A conventionally attractive boyfriend was a generic achievement.”
― Fern Brady, Strong Female Character

“Fear not. It will come. At least I hope it does. And when you least expect it. Nature has cunning ways of finding our weakest spot. Just remember: I am here. Right now you many not want to feel anything. Perhaps you never wished to feel anything. And perhaps it's not with me that you'll want to speak about these things. But feel something you did.”
― André Aciman, Call Me By Your Name

“By his age, you had met all the friend you would probably ever have. You had met your friends' friends. Life got smaller and smaller.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“You know what I see when I think about the past? A deep, vast ocean. Memories are the fish, I suppose. when I'm wading in the shallows I can reach in and pull one out if I want to. I can hold the memory in my hands, look at it, then drop I back into the water and let it swim away. But the deeper you go, the darker the water becomes. soon you can't see your feet anymore. you can't see the fish either, but you can feel them moving around you, brushing past your legs. Those fish belong out there, in the deep part.”
― Christian White, The Nowhere Child

“Do you remember the happiest day of your life? What about the saddest? Do you ever wonder if sadness and happiness can be combined, to make a deep purple feeling, not good, not bad, but remarkable simply because you didn't have to live on one side or the other?”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“This girl, now in her early teens, had never had a photograph of herself. There was no record of her childhood, nothing which would remind her of what she used to be. There was nothing, no image, of which she could say: "That is me". And all this meant that there was nobody who had ever wanted her picture; she had simply not been special enough.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, Tears of the Giraffe

“How many people do we miss out on in a lifetime?”
― Valérie Perrin, Trois

“There were also times, I have to admit, when I felt as if no one else could understand my pain. It seemed narcissistic even to contemplate. Yet that didn't make it feel any less true. Believing that your pain is exceptional doesn't lessen anyone else's. Pain is our universal condition. People can go through life without finding love, but no one lives long without experiencing real hurt. It can connect us or isolate us.”
― Hunter Biden, Beautiful Things: A Memoir

“We rip out so much of ourselves to be cured of things faster than we should that we go bankrupt by the age of thirty and have less to offer each time we start with someone new. But to feel nothing so as not to feel anything - what a waste!”
― Andre Aciman, Call Me by Your Name

“Surviving is the strongest memory I have; the sense of having walked on water –”
― Tim Winton, Breath

“We deny the severity of our loved one's problem not because we are naive, but because we can't know.”
― David Sheff, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

“Our children live or die with or without us. No matter what we do, no matter how we agonize or obsess, we cannot choose for our children whether they live or die. It is a devastating realization, but also liberating. I finally chose life for myself.”
― David Sheff, Beautiful Boy: A Father's Journey Through His Son's Addiction

“There’s a sad feeling in a place people have just walked out of and left behind.”
― Tim Winton, The Shepherd's Hut

“My yesterdays are disappearing, and my tomorrows are uncertain, so what do I live for? I live for each day. I live in the moment. Some tomorrow soon, I'll forget that I stood before you and gave this speech. But just because I'll forget it some tomorrow doesn't mean that I didn't live every second of it today. I will forget today, but that doesn't mean that today didn't matter.”
― Lisa Genova, Still Alice

“If you consider yourself a victim, you are not going to have a good life; if, however, you refuse to think of yourself as a victim—if you refuse to let your inner self be conquered by your external circumstances—you are likely to have a good life, no matter what turn your external circumstances take. (In particular, the Stoics thought it possible for a person to retain his tranquility despite being punished for attempting to reform the society in which he lived.)”
― William B. Irvine, A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy

“Fuck being cool and fuck being chill. If the reward for being the coolest girl in the room is a sliver of attention from the world’s most mediocre men then i would happily commit to never being cool and never being chill.”
― Drew Afualo, Loud: Accept Nothing Less Than the Life You Deserve

“I don't understand a thing about this world: about people, and why they do the things they do. The more I find out, the more I uncover, the more I know, the less I understand.”
― Craig Silvey, Jasper Jones

“Life might be easier if you give in a little, but it's better if you hold onto something so hard you can't give it up.”
― Craig Silvey, Jasper Jones

“Sorry.

Sorry means you feel the pulse of other people's pain as well as your own, and saying it means you take a share of it. And so it binds us together, makes us trodden and sodden as one another. Sorry is a lot of things. It's a hole refilled. A debt repaid. Sorry is the wake of misdeed. It's the crippling ripple of consequence. Sorry is sadness, just as knowing is sadness. Sorry is sometimes self-pity. But Sorry, really, is not about you. It's theirs to take or leave.

Sorry means you leave yourself open, to embrace or to ridicule or to revenge. Sorry is a question that begs forgiveness, because the metronome of a good heart won't settle until things are set right and true. Sorry doesn't take things back, but it pushes things forward. It bridges the gap. Sorry is a sacrament. It's an offering. A gift.”
― Craig Silvey, Jasper Jones

“A person is, among all else, a material thing, easily torn and not easily mended.”
― Ian McEwan, Atonement

“Can officially confirm that the way to a man's heart these days is not through beauty, food, sex, or alluringness of character, but merely the ability to seem not very interested in him.”
― Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary

“I will not fall for any of the following: alcoholics, workaholics, commitment phobics, people with girlfriends or wives, misogynists, megalomanics, chauvists, emotional fuckwits or freeloaders, perverts.”
― Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary

“When someone leaves you, apart from missing them, apart from the fact that the whole little world you've created together collapses, and that everything you see or do reminds you of them, the worst is the thought that they tried you out and, in the end, the whole sum of parts adds up to you got stamped REJECT by the one you love. How can you not be left with the personal confidence of a passed over British Rail sandwich?”
― Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary

“That is such crap. How dare you be so fraudulently flirtatious, cowardly and dysfunctional? I am not interested in emotional fuckwittage. Goodbye.”
― Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones’s Diary

“I will not get upset over men, but instead be poised and cool ice-queen.”
― Helen Fielding, Bridget Jones's Diary

“I forgot what it felt like to be young”
― Craig Silvey, Honeybee

“And I’m not wrong, I’m me. And I don’t want to be invisible anymore. I want people to see who I am”
― Craig Silvey, Honeybee

“Do your time before it does you.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“Every day of your life has been leading up to tomorrow. But of course every day of your life led up to today.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“But who can remember pain, once it’s over? All that remains of it is a shadow, not in the mind even, in the flesh. Pain marks you, but too deep to see. Out of sight, out of mind.”
― Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale