Madison > Madison's Quotes

“They say that a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of our tomorrows.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“It was interesting, she mused to herself, how life sometimes simply gave you a whole new perspective by waiting around long enough for you to see it.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“Because the terrible thing about becoming an adult is being forced to realize that absolutely nobody cares about us, we have to deal with everything ourselves now, find out how the whole world works. Work and pay bills, use dental floss and get to meetings on time, stand in line and fill out forms, come to grips with cables and put furniture together, change tires on the car and charge the phone and switch the coffee machine off and not forget to sign the kids up for swimming lessons. We open our eyes in the morning and life is just waiting to tip a fresh avalanche of "Don't Forget!"s and "Remember!"s over us. We don't have time to think or breathe, we just wake up and start digging through the heap, because there will be another one dumped on us tomorrow. We look around occasionally, at our place of work or at parents' meetings or out in the street, and realize with horror that everyone else seems to know exactly what they're doing. We're the only ones who have to pretend. Everyone else can afford stuff and has a handle on other stuff and enough energy to deal with even more stuff. And everyone else's children can swim.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“If someone asks you how you are, you are meant to say FINE. You are not meant to say that you cried yourself to sleep last night because you hadn't spoken to another person for two consecutive days. FINE is what you say.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“...when you took a moment to see what was around you, noticed all the little things, it made you feel....lighter.”
― Gail Honeyman, Eleanor Oliphant Is Completely Fine

“It’s amazing how someone can touch you, even if you only know them for a moment in time. How they can change you, alter you indelibly.”
― Abby Jimenez, Part of Your World

“We’re all a little broken, Briana. We are a mosaic. We’re made up of all those we’ve met and all the things we’ve been through. There are parts of us that are colorful and dark and jagged and beautiful. And I love every piece of you. Even the ones you wish didn’t exist.”
― Abby Jimenez, Yours Truly

“Grief, I'd come to realize was like dust, When you're in the thick of a dust storm, you're completely disoriented by the onslaught, struggling to see or breathe. But as the force recedes, and you slowly find your bearing and see a path forward, the dust begins to settle into the crevices. And it will never disappear completely- as the years pass, you'll find it in unexpected places at unexpected moments.”
― Mikki Brammer, The Collected Regrets of Clover

“I’m sorry someone made you feel like it’s hard to love you,’ she said.”
― Abby Jimenez, Yours Truly

“Instead of constantly asking ourselves the question of why we're here, maybe we should be savoring the simpler truth: We are here.”
― Mikki Brammer, The Collected Regrets of Clover

“Don’t let the best parts of life pass you by because you’re too scared of the unknown.”
― Mikki Brammer, The Collected Regrets of Clover

“People will just share the things that confirm their ideology, and those things will always exist. Our reality isn't about what's real, it's about what we pay attention to.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“The most impactful thing you can do with power is almost always to give it away.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“When we are grounded in the darkness, we are still entitled to a sliver of light. And for our own resilience, hope, and well-being, we must learn how to let light in. Day by day and moment by moment.”
― Cyndie Spiegel, Microjoys: Finding Hope (Especially) When Life Is Not Okay

“Rather than loudly proclaiming who we are and what we want in an effort to seek out happiness, microjoys simply ask us to notice what is squarely in front of us. To acknowledge and appreciate the mundane beauty of what is already here, in the present.”
― Cyndie Spiegel, Microjoys: Finding Hope (Especially) When Life Is Not Okay

“Forgiving others could be difficult, but forgiving yourself can sometimes feel impossible.”
― T.J. Klune, In the Lives of Puppets

“Life is just so damn complicated, isn't it, a series of random coincidences and chance meetings that add up to a lifetime.”
― Josie Silver, A Winter in New York

“I wear the gray in my hair as a badge of honor, the privilege of aging.”
― Sophie Cousens, The Good Part

“He says, “Every moment, every breath, contains a choice. But life is imperfect. We make the wrong choices. So we end up living in a state of perpetual regret, and is there anything worse? I built something that could actually eradicate regret. Let you find worlds where you made the right choice.” Daniela says, “Life doesn’t work that way. You live with your choices and learn. You don’t cheat the system.”
― Blake Crouch, Dark Matter

“For anyone who has wondered what their life might look like at the end of the road not taken.”
― Blake Crouch, Dark Matter

“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

“Nothing lasts forever. Not the good things, not the bad. So just find what makes you happy, and do it for as long as you can.”
― Ashley Poston, The Seven Year Slip

“Isn't it strange how the world works sometimes? It's never a matter of time, but a matter of timing.”
― Ashley Poston, The Seven Year Slip

“How do I forgive my past self for all the futures I didn’t become? I don’t know.”
― Ashley Poston, Sounds Like Love

“This feels like wealth, I think. This is the thing you save up for. You live your whole life so that you can be surrounded by too many people in too small of a room and tell the story of how it all happened.”
― Annabel Monaghan, It's a Love Story

“If it were socially acceptable, I’d like him to present me with an affidavit stipulating that he wanted to kiss me as much as I wanted to kiss him, and that if I express an interest in another kiss, he will not rescind his interest. It would be nice if it were notarized.”
― Annabel Monaghan, It's a Love Story