Kes > Kes's Quotes

“The whole point of life is doing what’s right, not what’s easy.”
― Trent Dalton, Boy Swallows Universe

“You don’t ever have to say anything,’ he says. ‘Always remember that as a thing you need never do. Many’s the man lost much just because he missed a perfect opportunity to say nothing.”
― Claire Keegan, Foster

“What is a game?" Marx said. "It's tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow. It's the possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption. The idea that if you keep playing, you could win. No loss is permanent, because nothing is permanent, ever.”
― Gabrielle Zevin, Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow

“...things get broken, and sometimes they get repaired, and in most cases, you realize that no matter what gets damaged, life rearranges itself to compensate for your loss, sometimes wonderfully.”
― Hanya Yanagihara, A Little Life

“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

“It's as if she understood completely the condition of loneliness and how it undermines us all, forcing us to make choices that we know are wrong for us.”
― John Boyne, The Heart's Invisible Furies

“We always think there's enough time to do things with other people. Time to say things to them. And then something happens and then we stand there holding on to words like 'if'.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“It is quite a revelation to discover that the place you wanted to escape to is the exact same place you escaped from. That the prison wasn't the place, but the perspective.”
― Matt Haig, The Midnight Library

“We like companionship, see, but we can't stand to be around people for very long. So we go get ourselves lost, come back for a while, then get the hell out again.”
― Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild

“Nothing disappears. Nothing is forgotten. Everything we say or do these days clings to us for ever.”
― John Boyne, Earth

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

“Love is wanting you to exist.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“loneliness is like starvation, you don’t realize how hungry you are until you begin to eat.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“Arrive into the present. There is a saying that if you are anxious, it's because you are living in the future. And if you are depressed, it's because you are living in the past. When you are living in the present moment you realise that both the past and the are just current illusions in the infinite eternal now.”
― Brianna Wiest, The Mountain Is You: Transforming Self-Sabotage Into Self-Mastery

“I think, often, about love strictly as a matter of perspective. For some, it is something they are receiving from someone whom they might slowly be draining the life from.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest

“Anger is a type of geography. The ways out of it expand the more you love a person. The more forgiveness you might be willing to afford each other opens up new and unexpected roads. And so, for some, staying angry at someone you love is a reasonable option. To stay angry at someone you know will forgive your anger is a type of love, or at least it is a type of familiarity that can feel like love.”
― Hanif Abdurraqib, Go Ahead in the Rain: Notes to A Tribe Called Quest

“Everyone is a hundred different things, but in other people’s eyes we usually get the chance to be only one of them.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Sometimes good people do terrible things in the belief that they’re trying to protect what they love.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“Two drowning people with lead weights around their ankles may not be each other’s salvation; if they hold hands, they’ll just sink twice as fast. In the end the weight of carrying each other’s broken hearts becomes unbearable.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“It’s impossible to measure love, but that doesn’t stop us coming up with new ways to try. One of the simplest is space: How much space am I prepared to give the person that you are so that you can become the person you want to become?”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“It’s easy to be seduced by the small amounts of profit offered by the latest app or service, but then forget its cost in terms of the most important resource we possess: the minutes of our life.”
― Cal Newport, Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World

“Nothing weighs more than someone else’s belief in you.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“He was good at seeing beauty in everything, that happens if you’re no good at seeing it in yourself.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“When you get old, gravity pulls the corners of your mouth down, the road to a smile grows longer.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“Because to remember is to fill the present with the past, which meant that the cost of remembering anything, anything at all, is life itself. We murder ourselves, he thought, by remembering”
― Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness

“The hardest thing in the world is to live only once. But it’s beautiful here, even the ghosts agree.”
― Ocean Vuong, The Emperor of Gladness

“Every action you take is a vote for the type of person you wish to become. No single instance will transform your beliefs, but as the votes build up, so does the evidence of your new identity.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“When you fall in love with the process rather than the product, you don’t have to wait to give yourself permission to be happy. You can be satisfied anytime your system is running.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“Becoming the best version of yourself requires you to continuously edit your beliefs, and to upgrade and expand your identity.”
― James Clear, Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones

“It's a gift to live in the world at the same time as the person you have in your heart.”
― Mizuki Tsujimura, How to Hold Someone in your Heart