Steph Ouimette > Steph's Quotes

“Everyone has a thousand wishes before a tragedy, but just one afterward.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“Never trust people who don't have something in their lives that they love beyond all reason.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“Hate can be a deeply stimulating emotion. The world becomes easier to understand and much less terrifying if you divide everything and everyone into friends and enemies, we and they, good and evil. The easiest way to unite a group isn't through love, because love is hard, It makes demands. Hate is simple. So the first thing that happens in a conflict is that we choose a side, because that's easier than trying to hold two thoughts in our heads at the same time. The second thing that happens is that we seek out facts that confirm what we want to believe - comforting facts, ones that permit life to go on as normal. The third is that we dehumanize our enemy.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“All adults have days when we feel completely drained. When we no longer know quite what we spend so much time fighting for, when reality and everyday worries overwhelm us and we wonder how much longer we’re going to be able to carry on. The wonderful thing is that we can all live through far more days like that without breaking than we think. The terrible thing is that we never know exactly how many.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“She’s fifteen, above the age of consent, and he’s seventeen, but he’s still “the boy” in every conversation. She’s “the young woman”.

Words are not small things.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“The love a parent feels for a child is strange. There is a starting point to our love for everyone else, but not this person. This one we have always loved, we loved them before they even existed. No matter how well prepared they are, all moms and dads experience a moment of total shock, when the tidal wave of feelings first washed through them, knocking them off their feet. It's incomprehensible because there's nothing to compare it to. It's like trying to describe sand between your toes or snowflakes on your tongue to someone who's lived their whole life in a dark room. It sends the soul flying.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“It doesn’t take a lot to be able to let go of your child. It takes everything.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“Late one evening towards the end of March, a teenager picked up a double-barrelled shotgun, walked into the forest, put the gun to someone else's forehead and pulled the trigger.

This is the story of how we got there.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“The only time I'm not moving forward is when I'm taking aim.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“This sport demands only one thing from you. Your all.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“A long marriage is complicated. So complicated, in fact, that most people in one sometimes ask themselves: 'Am I still married because I'm in love, or just because I can't be bothered to let anyone else get to know me this well again?”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“The only way to stop being afraid of the darkness out there is to find a darkness inside yourself that's bigger.”
― Fredrik Backman, Beartown

“Family is not an important thing, it's everything.”
― Michael J. Fox

“In this world, you must be oh so smart, or oh so pleasant.’ Well, for years I was smart. I recommend pleasant.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“That's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people want to be around someone because they're pretty. It's like picking your breakfeast cereals based on color instead of taste.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

“People will just share the things that confirm their ideology, and those things will always exist. Our reality isn't about what's real, it's about what we pay attention to.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“The solution is, everywhere and always, the decentralization and redistribution of all forms of power.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“We are each individual, but the far greater thing is what we are together, and if that isn't protected and cherished, we are headed to a bad place.”
― Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“Here’s a quick overview of what happens when groups of passionate believers start to define themselves in opposition to others: A simple message seems obvious to a large population, and those people can’t understand what the opposition could possibly be thinking. They never or almost never engage with someone who holds those different beliefs, and if they do, it’s in the context of the discussion, not in the context of, like, also being a human. The vast majority of those people nod appreciatively and then change the channel and watch NCIS and eat the tacos that they made. It’s their own recipe. They’ve developed it over years, and they like it better than any taco you could get at even a super fancy restaurant. They go to bed at 10: 30 and worry a bit about whether their son is adjusting well to college. A very small percentage get really riled up. They’re angry, but they’re mostly worried or even scared and want to cause some kind of action. They call their representatives and do a little organizing. They’re usually motivated not just by agreement in the message but by a hatred of the people trying to fight the message. A tiny percentage of that percentage just go way the fuck overboard. They get so frightened and angry that they need to make something happen. How? Well, that’s simple, right? You eliminate the people who are actively trying to destroy the world. If we’re all really unlucky, and if there are enough of them, those people find each other and they confirm and exacerbate their own extremism.”
― Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“That entire conversation had the feeling of a pleasant stroll inches away from the edge of the Grand Canyon.”
― Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“One of the most powerful traits of your system is how ardently you believe in your individuality while simultaneously operating almost entirely as a collective.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“The comments on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter instantly switched from a small, friendly, supportive community to a selection of the loudest, most over-the-top opinions one could imagine. I was a traitor to my species. I was ultra-fuckable. I was a space alien. I was an ultra-fuckable space alien. And so on.”
― Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“I don't even know what it would be like to not be attracted to a person because of their gender.”
― Hank Green, An Absolutely Remarkable Thing

“You will always struggle with not feeling productive until you accept that your own joy can be something you produce. It is not the only thing you will make, nor should it be, but it is something valuable and beautiful.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“I don’t read a ton, but I know that you usually have to flip through publisher information and title pages and “This one’s for my patient and loving wife, Katherine” before you hit the actual book.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“We live in hope - that life will get better, and more importantly that it will go on, that love will survive even though we will not. And between now and then, we are here because we're here because we're here because we're here.”
― John Green, The Anthropocene Reviewed: Essays on a Human-Centered Planet

“Collections of individuals are beautiful, but they are as common as pelagibacter. Collections of ideas are veins of gold in our universe. They must be cherished and protected.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“You will always struggle with not feeling productive until you accept that your own joy can be something you produce. It is not the only thing you will make, nor should it be, but it is something valuable and beautiful.”
― Hank Green, A Beautifully Foolish Endeavor

“Think of people as people, not problems that need to be solved.”
― Hank Green

“I live in the present due to the constraints of the time-space continuum.”
― Hank Green