Danny Rydstrom

“Maybe you feel like telling me about Hanoi 1902, when the city tried to fight a plague of rats by offering the inhabitants a reward for every rat they killed and whose tail they handed over to the police. And what did that lead to? People started breeding rats! Do you have any idea how many men have told me that story to illustrate how selfish and untrustworthy ordinary people are?”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“Anyone can nurture a myth about their life if they have enough manure, so if the grass looks greener on the other side of the fence, that’s probably because it’s full of shit.”
― Fredrik Backman, Anxious People

“when air, food, and shelter are assured, only two things matter. Work and companionship. To be alone and without purpose is to be the living dead.”
― Christopher Paolini, To Sleep in a Sea of Stars

“Annie needn’t have suffered. At every turn there had been a hand reaching to pull her from the abyss, but the counter-tug of addiction was more forceful, and the grip of shame just as strong. It was this that pulled her under, that had extinguished her hope and then her life many years earlier. What her murderer claimed on that night was simply all that remained of what drink had left behind.”
― Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the Ripper