Barbara Benton > Barbara's Quotes

“Vincent Van Gogh wrote: 'I always think that the best way to know God is to love many things.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“I think people get bored of grief,” said Natasha. “It’s like you’re allowed some unspoken allotted time—six months maybe—and then they get faintly irritated that you’re not ‘better,’ like you’re being self-indulgent hanging on to your unhappiness.”
― Jojo Moyes, After You

“Being a parent is so strange, all our children's pain belongs to us, but so does their joy.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Friends

“There’s nothing good about losing someone. But maybe Lucy wasn’t supposed to be your compass forever. Maybe she was there for you just long enough so you could learn how to be your own compass and find your own way. The universe is a strange thing.”
― Julie Murphy, Dumplin'

“Things do not always work out as we have planned, do they? Sometimes the hardest thing is not to just survive the grief, but to step around it and move on. It helps if your suitcases are not so full.”
― Karen White, The Time Between

“I often think that the ability to earn a living by doing the thing one loves must be one of life’s greatest gifts.”
― Jojo Moyes, The Girl You Left Behind

“You learn to live with it, with them. Because they do stay with you, even if they’re not living, breathing people any more.
It’s not the same crushing grief you felt at first, the kind that swamps you, and makes you want to cry in the wrong places, and get irrationally angry with all the idiots who are still alive when the person you love is dead.
It’s just something you learn to accommodate.
Like adapting around a hole. I don’t know. It’s like you become … a doughnut instead of a bun”
― Jojo Moyes, After You

“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

“Death’s greatest power is not that it can make people die, but that it can make people want to stop living.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Most days now his loss is a part of her, an awkward weight she carries around, invisible to everyone else, subtly altering the way she moves through the day.”
― Jojo Moyes, The Girl You Left Behind

“Even when you have gone as far as you can, and everything hurts, and you are staring at the specter of self-doubt, you can find a bit more strength deep inside you, if you look closely enough.”
― Hal Higdon

“When you care about other people, it takes the spotlight off your own drama.”
― Holly Goldberg Sloan, Counting by 7s

“And do you know the oddest thing about murder and war and violence? The oddest thing is that they all go against the lessons that grown-ups teach children. Don't hurt anyone. Solve your problems with language instead of fists. Share your things. Don't take something that belongs to someone else without asking. Use your manners. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Why do mothers and fathers bother spending so much time teaching children these lessons when grown-ups don't pay any attention to the words themselves?”
― Cat Winters

“But this is what friends do. We remind each other how awesome we are.”
― Elizabeth Eulberg

“It is my belief God sends the solution first and the problem later,” replied Dr. Javid.”
― Malala Yousafzai, I Am Malala: The Girl Who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban

“You miss the strangest things when you lose someone. Little things. Smiles. The way she turned over in her sleep. Even repainting a room for her.”
― Fredrik Backman, A Man Called Ove

“People in the real world always say, when something terrible happens, that the sadness and loss and aching pain of the heart will “lessen as time passes,” but it isn’t true. Sorrow and loss are constant, but if we all had to go through our whole lives carrying them the whole time, we wouldn’t be able to stand it. The sadness would paralyze us. So in the end we just pack it into bags and find somewhere to leave it.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“Never mess with someone who has more spare time than you do[.]”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“It's strange how teachers can go off to college for all those years to learn to become teachers, but some of them never learn the easy stuff. Like making kids laugh. And making sure they know that you love them.”
― Matthew Dicks, Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend

“There are times when you have to rely on other people, sit back and let them help you, be quiet, be appreciative, and stay out of their way.”
― Jim Kokoris, It's. Nice. Outside.

“You know how teachers are. If they get you to take out a book they love too, they're yours for life.”
― Gary D. Schmidt, Orbiting Jupiter

“You don't have to let that one thing be the thing that defines you.”
― Jojo Moyes, After You

“No journey out of grief was straightforward. There would be good days and bad days.”
― Jojo Moyes, After You

“But then I knew better than anyone how the persona you chose to present to the world could be very different from what was really inside. I knew how grief could make you behave in ways you couldn't even begin to understand.”
― Jojo Moyes, After You

“Do you know what forever love is? Pearl taught me. It's when you love somebody so much that no matter what happens that'll never change. Like even if you're gone. It's still the same. Even if you die. You die, but not the love. Not forever love. Know what I mean?”
― Catherine Ryan Hyde, Love in the Present Tense

“We can't change things by wishing. Only by doing. It's our actions, Tara, not our thoughts.”
― Jennifer McMahon, The One I Left Behind

“Having a grandmother is like having an army. This is a grandchild’s ultimate privilege: knowing that someone is on your side, always, whatever the details.”
― Fredrik Backman, My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She's Sorry

“No one tells you how gone gone really is, or how long it lasts.”
― Jandy Nelson, I'll Give You the Sun

“Have you ever known grieving that ends only when your own heart stops beating?”
― Karen White

“So much of who you are has to do with your mother.”
― Helen Klein Ross, What Was Mine