Katerina > Katerina's Quotes

“You don't choose what to believe. Belief chooses you.”
― Steven Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo

“Do you know the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? A pessimist says ‘Oh dear, things can’t possibly get any worse.’ And an optimist says, ‘Don’t be so sad. Things can always get worse.”
― Steven Galloway, The Cellist of Sarajevo

“THE WORLD IS increasingly designed to depress us. Happiness isn’t very good for the economy. If we were happy with what we had, why would we need more? How do you sell an anti-ageing moisturiser? You make someone worry about ageing. How do you get people to vote for a political party? You make them worry about immigration. How do you get them to buy insurance? By making them worry about everything. How do you get them to have plastic surgery? By highlighting their physical flaws. How do you get them to watch a TV show? By making them worry about missing out. How do you get them to buy a new smartphone? By making them feel like they are being left behind. To be calm becomes a kind of revolutionary act. To be happy with your own non-upgraded existence. To be comfortable with our messy, human selves, would not be good for business.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“There is no standard normal. Normal is subjective. There are seven billion versions of normal on this planet.”
― Matt Haig, Reasons to Stay Alive

“You don’t have to be an academic. You don’t have to be anything. Don’t force it. Feel your way, and don’t stop feeling your way until something fits. Maybe nothing will. Maybe you are a road, not a destination. That is fine. Be a road. But make sure it’s one with something to look at out of the window.”
― Matt Haig, The Humans

“In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
― George Orwell

“When dealing with the insane, the best method is to pretend to be sane.”
― Hermann Hesse

“Fear of danger is ten thousand times more terrifying than danger itself.”
― Daniel Defoe

“Werner wonders in the dead of night, isn’t life a kind of corruption? A child is born, and the world sets in upon it.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“See obstacles as opportunities, Reinhold. See obstacles as inspirations.”
― Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

“She was free in her wildness. She was a wanderess, a drop of free water. She belonged to no man and to no city”
― Roman Payne, The Wanderess

“I was afraid of the sea when I was a girl. Someone said it went on forever and that frightened me. I wondered why my parents had chosen to live at the beginning and the end of the world.”
― Simon Van Booy, The Illusion of Separateness

“I think people would be happier if they admitted things more often. In a sense we are all prisoners of some memory, or fear, or disappointment - we are all defined by something we can’t change.”
― Simon Van Booy, The Illusion of Separateness

“In the end I didn't know who I was crying for, but it was something my body wanted to do, as though trying to digest grief.”
― Simon Van Booy, The Illusion of Separateness

“There's never enough time to do all the nothing you want.”
― Bill Watterson

“But do we really live? To live without knowing what life is - is that living?”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“I don't mourn the loss of my childhood; I mourn because everything, including (my) childhood, is lost.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet

“What a caterpillar calls the end of the world we call a butterfly.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

“I may not have been sure about what really did interest me, but I was absolutely sure about what didn't.”
― Albert Camus, The Stranger

“Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood.”
― George Orwell, 1984

“some things can’t be explained, only forgiven or not.”
― Delia Owens, Where the Crawdads Sing

“It's the most beautiful disappearance ever.”
― Yōko Ogawa, The Memory Police