Louis > Louis's Quotes

“This story is about a lot of things, but mostly about idiots. So it needs saying from the outset that it’s always very easy to declare that other people are idiots, but only if you forget how idiotically difficult being human is.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“The pleasure of rooting for Goliath is that you can expect to win. The pleasure of rooting for David is that, while you don’t know what to expect, you stand at least a chance of being inspired.”
― Michael Lewis, Moneyball

“You know what I am,” he said in a flat voice.
“A bard?”
“A bastard. I have no father, no proud lineage, no lands. I have nothing to offer you, Adaira.”
“There is much you can offer me,” she countered, heady from the mere thought of his music. Spirits below, he had no idea the power he wielded. “And those things you mention don’t matter to me.”
“But they matter to me,” Jack said, with a fist over his heart. “People will be appalled when they realize you want to marry me. That you chose me. Out of all the men in the east, I am the most unworthy.”
“Let them,” Adaira said. “Let them be appalled, let them talk. Let them say whatever they want, it will soon fade, I promise you. And when it fades…it will be you and me and the truth. And that is all that matters in the end.”
― Rebecca Ross, A River Enchanted

“The only thing the sport gives us are moments. But what the hell is life, Peter, apart from moments?”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“And when enough people are quiet for long enough, a handful of voices can give the impression that everyone is screaming.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“It’s hard to care about people. Exhausting, in fact, because empathy is a complicated thing. It requires us to accept that everyone else’s lives are also going on the whole time. We have no pause button for when everything gets too much for us to deal with, but then neither does anyone else.”
― Fredrik Backman, Us Against You

“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

“When you're young you believe that love is infatuation, but infatuation is simple, any child can become infatuated, fall in love. But real love? Love is a job for an adult. Love demands a whole person, all the best of you, all the worst. It has nothing to do with romance, because the hard part of a marriage isn't that I have to live seeing all your faults, but that you have to live with me seeing them. That I know everything about you now. Most people aren't brave enough to live without secrets. Everyone dreams about being invisible sometimes, no one dreams of being transparent.

Marriage? There ought to be a different word for it after a while. Because there's no such thing as 'eternal infatuation,' only love lasts that long, and it's never simple. It requires a whole person, everything you have. The whole lot.”
― Fredrik Backman, The Winners

“Being married is easy, she usually thinks. You just pick an argument you’re really good at, then repeat it at least once a week for all eternity.”
― Fredrik Backman, The Winners

“We can’t fight against evil. That’s the most unbearable thing about the world we have built. Evil can’t be eradicated, can’t be locked up, the more violence we use against it, the stronger it becomes when it seeps out under doors and through keyholes. It can never disappear because it grows inside us, sometimes even in the best of us, sometimes even in fourteen-year-olds. We have no weapons against it. We have only been given love as a gift in order to cope with it.”
― Fredrik Backman, The Winners

“It’s the same everywhere: almost everyone loves too much, hates too easily, forgives too little. But most people want the same as him: to live in peace, to let your heart beat a little more slowly when night comes, to earn a bit of money to support the ones you love.”
― Fredrik Backman, The Winners

“There are always two sides to everything, one we see and one we don't see.”
― Fredrik Backman, The Winners

“Above all the other words for love, there ought to be one for this: one that says how many times we’ve come close to losing each other but turn back and start again. One for the very smallest things, the inches, when we brush past each other in the kitchen instead of only almost doing it. Something that says I can’t bear it. I can’t bear it if you can’t bear me. I can’t bear it without you. They”
― Fredrik Backman, The Winners

“Charlie, you and I both know that justice isn't always about what the law dictates. Hell, maybe it never is.”
― William Kent Krueger, The River We Remember

“Courage is fear you ignore.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Four Winds

“Love is what remains when everything else is gone. This is what I should have told my children when we left Texas. What I will tell them tonight. Not that they will understand yet. How could they?
I am forty years old, and I just learned this fundamental truth myself.
Love. In the best of times, it is a dream. In the worst of times, a salvation.
I am in love. There it is. I've written it down. Soon I will say it out loud. To him.
I am in love. As crazy and ridiculous and implausible as it sounds, I am in love. And I am loved in return.
And this-love-gives me the courage I need for today.
The four winds have blown us here, people from all across the country, to the very edge of this great land, and now, at last, we make our stand, fight for what we know to be right. We fight for our American dream, that it will be possible again.
Jack says that I am a warrior and, while I don't believe it, I know this: A warrior believes in an end she can't see and fights for it. A warrior never gives up. A warrior fights for those weaker than herself.
It sounds like motherhood to me.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Four Winds

“What makes us the most normal," said Reiko, "is knowing that we're not normal.”
― Haruki Murakami, Norwegian Wood

“Most things are forgotten over time. Even the war itself, the life-and-death struggle people went through is now like something from the distant past. We’re so caught up in our everyday lives that events of the past are no longer in orbit around our minds. There are just too many things we have to think about everyday, too many new things we have to learn. But still, no matter how much time passes, no matter what takes place in the interim, there are some things we can never assign to oblivion, memories we can never rub away. They remain with us forever, like a touchstone.”
― haruki murakami, Kafka on the Shore