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Katherine Heiny
“Fun. Wasn't that really the beauty of childhood? That you measured experiences by how much fun they were, not by how much work or inconvenience or tedious conversation they caused you? Of course you didn't think of the tiresome things if you were a kid, because you didn't have to do them.”
Katherine Heiny, Standard Deviation

Fredrik Backman
“A human being, any human being at all, has so perishingly few chances to stay right there, to let go of time and fall into the moment. And to love someone without measure, explode with passion... A few times when we are children, maybe, for those of us who are allowed to be... But after that? How many breaths are we allowed to take beyond the confines of ourselves? How many pure emotions make us cheer out loud without a sense of shame? How many chances do we get to be blessed by amnesia? All passion is childish, it's banal and naive, it's nothing we learn, it's instinctive, and so it overwhelms us... Overturns us... It bears us away in a flood... All other emotions belong to the earth, but passion inhabits the universe. That is the reason why passion is worth something. Not for what it gives us, but for what it demands that we risk - our dignity, the puzzlement of others in their condescending shaking heads...”
Fredrik Backman, Britt-Marie Was Here
tags: life

J.L. Carr
“That was the missed moment. I should have put out a hand and taken her arm and said, "Here I am. Ask me. Now. The real question! Tell me. While I'm here. Ask me before it's too late.”
J.L. Carr, A Month in the Country

Hermann Hesse
“He saw the sun rise over forest and mountains and set over the distant palm shore. At night he saw the starts in the heavens and the sickle-shaped moon floating like a boat in the blue. He saw trees, stars, animals, clouds, rainbows, rocks, weeds, flowers, brook and river, the sparkle of dew on bushes in the morning, distant high mountains blue and pale; birds sang, bees hummed, the wind blew gently across the rice fields. All this, colored and in a thousand different forms, had always been there.”
Hermann Hesse

“But about the gentleman thing.” She waved her glass. “I want to make it plain as the nose on your face. I can stand anything in the book but gentlemen. Because I've spent a lot of time, too much time with them, and I know why gentlemen are what they are. They decide to be that way after they've tried all the real things and flopped at them. They've flopped at women. They've flopped at standing up on their hind legs and acting like men. So they become gentlemen. They've flopped at being individuals. So they say to themselves one fine morning: 'What can I be that's no trouble at all and that doesn't amount to a damned thing, but yet will make everyone look up to me?' The answer's simple. Be a gentleman. Take life flat on your back, cry in private, and then in a well-modulated voice.”
Elliot Chaze, Black Wings Has My Angel

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