Kathleen > Kathleen's Quotes

“Read, learn, work it up, go to the literature.

Information is control.”
― Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking

“All sorrows can be borne if you put them into a story or tell a story about them. But if we cannot find a way of telling our story, our story tells us- we dream these stories, we develop symptoms, or we find ourselves acting in ways we don't understand.”
― Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life: How We Lose and Find Ourselves

“I want to continue being crazy; living my life the way I dream it, and not the way the other people want it to be.”
― Paulo Coelho, Veronika Decides to Die

“It felt like the world had divided into two different types of people, those who had felt pain and those who had yet to.”
― Michelle Zauner, Crying in H Mart

“He wasn't a bad person. But men like him - in positions of power who watched the wheels of suppression turn from a distance, standing by and doing nothing - were the protectors of the broken system. They're the fuel that made the fire burn.”
― Ela Lee, Jaded

“Women took care of men and let them pretend we didn’t.”
― Naoise Dolan, Exciting Times

“Too much joy, I swear, is lost in our desperation to keep it.”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“I remember the shock of it, then questioning how it is that death can be life’s only assurance and yet also its greatest, most devastating surprise.”
― Susan Abulhawa, Against the Loveless World

“Cara, we must not wait to live the life we want. Find a way to be present with the people you love.”
― Angie Cruz, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water

“I'm sorry I keep saying How are you? when I really mean Are you happy?”
― Ocean Vuong, On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous

“Palestinians learned the first time in 1948 that leaving to save your life meant you would lose everything and could never go back.”
― Susan Abulhawa, Against the Loveless World

“Because I am lost," she whispered onto the earth. "And I do not know the way.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Heir of Fire

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

“Of course I am not worried about intimidating men. The type of man who will be intimidated by me is exactly the type of man I have no interest in.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“What are you doing?”
“What?”
Emrys didn’t raise his voice as he said, “To that girl. What are you doing that makes her come in here with such emptiness in her eyes?”
“That’s none of your concern.”
Emrys pressed his lips into a tight line. “What do you see when you look at her, Prince?”
He didn’t know. These days, he didn’t know a damn thing. “That’s none of your concern, either.”
Emrys ran a hand over his weathered face. “I see her slipping away, bit by bit, because you shove her down when she so desperately needs someone to help her back up.”
― Sarah J. Maas, Heir of Fire

“The excuses we make for them are outrageous, but they’re nothing compared with the ones we make for ourselves.”
― Kate Elizabeth Russell, My Dark Vanessa

“We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.”
― David Brooks, How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen

“Teach her that if you criticize X in women but do not criticize X in men, then you do not have a problem with X, you have a problem with women.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Dear Ijeawele, or A Feminist Manifesto in Fifteen Suggestions

“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

“Why did people ask "What is it about?" as if a novel had to be about only one thing.”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Americanah

“History has failed us, but no matter.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“Grief is a cruel kind of education. You learn how ungentle mourning can be, how full of anger. You learn how glib condolences can feel. You learn how much grief is about language, the failure of language and the grasping for language”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

“We cannot help but be interested in the stories of people that history pushes aside so thoughtlessly.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“Sometimes we need help to not drown in a glass of water.”
― Angie Cruz, How Not to Drown in a Glass of Water

“Does love bring, even if unconsciously, the delusional arrogance of expecting never to be touched by grief?”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

“Fill your mind with knowledge—it’s the only kind of power no one can take away from you.”
― Min Jin Lee, Pachinko

“Our ultimate goal, after all, is not a good death but a good life to the very end.”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

“How is it that the world keeps going, breathing in and out unchanged, while in my soul there is a permanent scattering?”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief

“You may not control life's circumstances, but getting to be the author of your life means getting to control what you do with them.”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

“I am afraid of tomorrow, and all the tomorrows after...”
― Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes on Grief