Flor Bergius > Flor's Quotes

“Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I hope you never think about anything as much as I think about you.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I knew that our time together was almost over, I asked her if she liked sports, she asked me if I liked chess, I asked her if she liked fallen trees, she went home with her father, the center of me followed her, but I was left with the shell of me, I needed to see her again, I couldn't explain my need to myself, and that's why it was such a beautiful need, there's nothing wrong with not understanding yourself.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“We talked about nothing in particular, but it felt like we were talking about the most important things...”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“She laughed enough to migrate an entire flock of birds. That was how she said yes”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“I started inventing things, and then I couldn't stop, like beavers, which I know about. People think they cut down trees so they can build dams, but in reality it's because their teeth never stop growing, and if they didn't constantly file them down by cutting through all of those trees, their teeth would start to grow into their own faces, which would kill them. That's how my brain was.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“And the joys I've felt have not always been joyous. I could have lived differently. When I was your age, my grandfather bought me a ruby bracelet. It as too big for me an would slide up and down my arm. It was almost a necklace. He later told me that he had asked the jeweler make that way. Its size was supposed to be a symbol of his love. More rubies, more love. But I could not wear it comfortably. I could not wear it at all. So here is the point of everything I have been trying to say. IF I were to give a bracelet to you, now, I would measure your wrist twice”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“We need enormous pockets, pockets big enough for our families and our friends, and even the people who aren't on our lists, people we've never met but still want to protect. We need pockets for boroughs and for cities, a pocket that could hold the universe.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“You are the only one who has understood even a whisper of me, and I will tell you that I am the only person who has understood even a whisper of you.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Everything is Illuminated

“Real generosity towards the future lies in giving all to the present.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942

“You do not have to unburden your soul for everyone; it will be enough if you do that for those you love.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1935-1942

“I’m going to tell you something: thoughts are never honest. Emotions are.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959

“Find meaning. Distinguish melancholy from sadness. Go out for a walk. It doesn’t have to be a romantic walk in the park, spring at its most spectacular moment, flowers and smells and outstanding poetical imagery smoothly transferring you into another world. It doesn’t have to be a walk during which you’ll have multiple life epiphanies and discover meanings no other brain ever managed to encounter. Do not be afraid of spending quality time by yourself. Find meaning or don’t find meaning but 'steal' some time and give it freely and exclusively to your own self. Opt for privacy and solitude. That doesn’t make you antisocial or cause you to reject the rest of the world. But you need to breathe. And you need to be.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959

“It is not true that the heart wears out — but the body creates this illusion.”
― Albert Camus, Notebooks 1951-1959

“Is there a word for the moment you win tug-of-war? When the weight gives, and all that extra rope comes hurtling towards you, how even though you've won, you still end up with muddy knees and burns on your hands? Is there a word for that? I wish there was.”
― Sarah Kay, No Matter the Wreckage: Poems

“Ana Iris once asked me if I loved him and I told her about the lights in my old home in the capital, how they flickered and you never knew if they would go out or not. You put down your things and you waited and couldn't do anything really until the lights decided. This, I told her, is how I feel.”
― Junot Diaz, This Is How You Lose Her

“This is what I know: people's hopes go on forever.”
― Junot Díaz, This Is How You Lose Her

“For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be ragged or well dressed. Let me be sincere - be deceitful. Let me be truthful; let me be a liar. Let me be honorable and let me sin. Only let me be something every blessed minute. And when I sleep, let me dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is ever lost.”
― Betty Smith, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn

“And yet another moral occurs to me now: Make love when you can. It's good for you.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“All right - I'll tell you what you did for me: you went for happy, silly, beautiful walks with me.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Bluebeard

“If I am going to spend eternity visiting this moment and that, I'm grateful that so many of those moments are nice.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughterhouse-Five

“I didn't feel sad or happy. I didn't feel proud or ashamed. I only felt that in spite of all the things I'd done wrong, in getting myself here, I'd done right.”
― Cheryl Strayed, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail

“Life seemed even more of a guessing game than usual.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“He had a better mind and a more rigorous temperament than me; he thought logically, and then acted on the conclusion of logical thought. Whereas most of us, I suspect, do the opposite: we make an instinctive decision, then build up an infrastructure of reasoning to justify it. And call the result common sense.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“Did you leave me because of me?" "No," she said. "I left you because of us.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all.”
― Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

“He awoke at six, as usual. He needed no alarm clock. He was already comprehensively alarmed.”
― Martin Amis, The Information

“And I urge you to please notice when you are happy, and exclaim or murmur or think at some point, 'If this isn't nice, I don't know what is.”
― Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country

“Wisdom consists partly in not pretending anymore, in discarding artifice.”
― Julian Barnes