Lec > Lec's Quotes

“We ourselves are responsible for what happens to us, whether or not we can understand how. It follows that we can change what happens to us by changing ourselves; we can take our destiny into our own hands.”
― Eknath Easwaran, The Bhagavad Gita

“We never really encounter the world; all we experience is our own nervous system.”
― Eknath Easwaran, The Bhagavad Gita

“Those who violate these laws, criticizing and complaining, are utterly deluded, and are the cause of their own suffering.”
― Eknath Easwaran, The Bhagavad Gita

“Affectionately, Krishna assures Arjuna that no attempt to improve his spiritual condition could be a wasted effort. Even looking ahead to the next life, he has nothing to lose and everything to gain. He will be reborn in a household suitable for taking up his quest where he left off. In his next life, he will feel drawn to the spiritual goal once again, and he will have a head start.”
― Eknath Easwaran, The Bhagavad Gita

“One who has merely heard of fire has ajnana, ignorance. One who has seen fire has jnana. But one who has actually built a fire and cooked on it has vijnana.”
― Eknath Easwaran, The Bhagavad Gita

“Rot beneath the veneer.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Queen of Blood

“They love me. I love them. It should be easy.”
“Once you leave, it’s never easy again. Or at least it’s never the same. You’re not the same. You can’t expect them to be.”
She nodded. “Sometimes they feel like strangers. And still, I’d die to protect them.”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Queen of Blood

“For some crazy reason, he believed in her, and that was extraordinary. No one had ever
believed in her before. Not her mother, who used to call her worthless every time she tried to help around the house and worse than worthless if she didn’t try to help. Not her father, who had informed her on her sixth birthday that she shouldn’t have been born, before he walked out the door never to come back. Not her sisters, who stole her clothes whenever she didn’t hide them. Not her
older brother, who used to hit her but only in places it wouldn’t show. Not her teacher, who’d called her a liar when she’d tried to say she felt spirits. Oh, how she’d loved the day he had been proved wrong! She’d loved the moment when it was her turn to walk out that door!”
― Sarah Beth Durst, The Reluctant Queen

“Emotional loneliness is so distressing that a child who experiences it will do whatever is necessary to make some kind of connection with the parent. These children may learn to put other people's needs first as the price of admission to a relationship. Instead of expecting others to provide support or show interest in them, they may take on the role of helping others, convincing everyone that they have few emotional needs of their own. Unfortunately, this tends to create even more loneliness, since covering up your deepest needs prevents genuine connection with others.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“They have trouble admitting mistakes and instead discount facts and blame others. Regulating emotions is difficult for them, and they often overreact. Once they get upset, it’s hard for them to calm down, and they expect other people to soothe them by doing what they want. They often seek comfort intoxicants or medication.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“This creates a tenacious resolve to keep trying to get the reward, because once in a while these efforts do pay off. In this way, parental inconsistency can be the quality that binds children most closely to their parent, as they keep hoping to get that infrequent and elusive positive response.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“In enmeshment, on the other hand, two emotionally immature people
seek their identity and self-completion through an intense, dependent
relationship (Bowen 1978). Through this enmeshed relationship, they create
a sense of certainty, predictability, and security that relies on the reassuring
familiarity of each person playing a comfortable role for the other. If one
person tries to step out of the implicit bounds of the relationship, the other
often experiences great anxiety that’s only eased by a return to the
prescribed role.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“But obvious favoritism isn’t a sign of a close relationship; it’s a sign of
enmeshment. It’s likely that the preferred sibling has a psychological
maturity level similar to your parent’s (Bowen 1978). Low levels of
emotional maturity pull people into mutual enmeshment, especially if they
are parent and child.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Remember, emotionally immature parents relate on the basis of roles,
not individuality. If you had an independent, self-reliant personality, your
parent wouldn’t have seen you as a needy child for whom he or she could
play the role of rescuing parent. Instead, you may have been pegged as the
child without needs, the little grown-up. It wasn’t some sort of insufficiency
in you that made your parent pay more attention to your sibling; rather, it’s
likely that you weren’t dependent enough to trigger your parent’s
enmeshment instincts.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“Interestingly, self-sufficient children who don’t spur their parents to
become enmeshed are often left alone to create a more independent and
self-determined life (Bowen 1978). Therefore, they can achieve a level of
self-development exceeding that of their parents. In this way, not getting
attention can actually pay off in the long run. But in the meantime, highfunctioning
children still have the pain of feeling left out as their parent
pours energy into emotional enmeshment with one or more siblings.”
― Lindsay C. Gibson, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents

“There’s always going to be pain and anger and heartbreak and frustration. But there’s going to be joy, too.”
― Kheryn Callender, This Is Kind of an Epic Love Story

“A popular man arouses the jealousy of the powerful.”
― Frank Herbert, Dune

“He was a man of black and white. And she was color. All the color he had.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“To love someone is like moving into a house," Sonja used to say. "At first you fall in love in everything new, you wonder every morning that this is one's own, as if they are afraid that someone will suddenly come tumbling through the door and say that there has been a serious mistake and that it simply was not meant to would live so fine. But as the years go by, the facade worn, the wood cracks here and there, and you start to love this house not so much for all the ways it is perfect in that for all the ways it is not. You become familiar with all its nooks and crannies. How to avoid that the key gets stuck in the lock if it is cold outside. Which floorboards have some give when you step on them, and exactly how to open the doors for them not to creak. That's it, all the little secrets that make it your home.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Death is a strange thing. People live their whole lives as if it does not exist, and yet it's often one of the great motivations for living. Some of us, in time, become so conscious of it that we live harder, more obstinately, with more fury. Some need its constant presence to even be aware of its antithesis. Others become so preoccupied with it that they go into the waiting room long before it has announced its arrival. We fear it, yet most of us fear more than anything that it may take someone other than ourselves. For the greatest fear of death is always that it will pass us by. And leave us there alone.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“Men are what they are because of what they do. Not what they say.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“She often said that “all roads lead to something you were always predestined to do.” And for her, perhaps, it was something.

But for Ove it was someone.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“It’s probably full of disgusting diseases and rabies and all sorts of things!” Ove looks at the cat. Looks at the Weed. Nods. “And so are you, most likely. But we don’t throw stones at you because of it.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“We can busy ourselves with living or with dying, Ove. We have to move on.”
And that’s how it was.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“I've never let a door stay closed for long: I suppose you could say that's my main problem in life.”
― Lucy Foley, The Paris Apartment

“He’s kind of attractive, if you like your men rough around the edges.”
― Lucy Foley, The Paris Apartment

“And somehow, even though I hate my name, on his lips it sounded different, almost special.”
― Lucy Foley, The Paris Apartment

“Sometimes, when I’ve got a stick of charcoal or a paintbrush in my hand, it feels like the only time I’m complete. The only way I can speak properly.”
― Lucy Foley, The Paris Apartment

“But that’s what being poor does to you; it shortens your childhood. It hardens your ambition.”
― Lucy Foley, The Paris Apartment

“It’s not about where you came from. What kind of shit might have happened to you in the past. It’s about who you are. What you do with the opportunities life presents to you.”
― Lucy Foley, The Paris Apartment