#life (62 quotes)
If you don’t have a witness, your past starts to feel fictional.
— , Exit Party A lot of adult life consists of staying in character, even when you no longer want to.
— , Look What You Made Me Do Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colours. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
— , A Hat Full of Sky There are people like him (so he says) who complicate their inner lives by feeling too much all at once, by living in knots, and who therefore need outer things to be simple. A house, a field, some sheep for example. And there are those who manage somehow, by some miracle of being, to simplify their inner lives so that outer things can be ambitious and limitless.
— , Orbital I suspect we all sort of secretly think our lives are like these very long movies, with ourselves as the principal characters, obviously. Only very occasionally does it occur to any one of us that all these supporting actors, cameo turns, bit players and extras around us might actually be in some sense real, just as real as we are, and that they might think that the Big Movie is really all about them, not us; that each one of them has their own film unreeling inside their own head and we are just part of the supporting cast in their story.
— , Stonemouth In the end, no matter how cool he is, your dad is still your dad.
— , Stonemouth We always want more, he thought, we always take our past successes for granted and assume they but point the way to future triumphs. But the universe does not have our own best interests at heart, and to assume for a moment that it does, ever did or ever might is to make the most calamitous and hubristic of mistakes.
— , Look to Windward People who say things like ‘may all your dreams come true’ should try living in one for five minutes.
— , The Wee Free Men If more of us valued food and cheer and song above hoarded gold, it would be a merrier world.
— , The Hobbit Love doesn’t have goals or benchmarks or blueprints, but it does have a purpose. The purpose is not to change the people we love, but to give them what they need to thrive. Love’s purpose is not to shape our beloved’s destiny, but to help them shape their own. It isn’t to show them the way, but to help them find a path for themselves, even if the path they take isn’t one we would choose ourselves, or even one we would choose for them.
— , The Gardener and the Carpenter This I learned, meatbag, this and nothing more: 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.
— , To Sleep in a Sea of Stars You have only small and seemingly pointless choices available to you. But if there is anything I have been trying to teach you, it is that small actions can have larger consequences. If one has only small choices available, one must be patient, and canny.
— , Translation State The need for personal glory is like cigarette addiction: a habit that feels life-sustaining even as it kills you.
— , The Candy House The belly craves food, she thinks, The tongue craves water, The heart craves love, and The mind craves stories.
— , The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet Creation never ceased on the sixth evening, it occurs to the young man. Creation unfolds around us, despite us and through us at the speed of days and nights. And we call it love.
— , The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet Wakefulness or enlightenment can be reasonably defined as appreciating the mystery of life in the present moment, while knowing it is the only 'thing' there is. Wakefulness’ opposite – the dissatisfaction brought about by reactive emotions and alienating desire – can be reasonably defined as the futile attempt to ‘get something out of life.’
— , Radically Condensed Instructions for Being Just as You Are She had once read in a book about consciousness that over the years, the human brain makes an AI version of your loved ones. The brain collects data, and within your brain, you host a virtual version of that person. Upon the person’s death, your brain still believes the virtual person exists, because, in a sense, the person still does. After a while, though, the memory fades, and each year, you are left with an increasingly diminished version of the AI you had made when the person was alive.
— , Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow None of us can be damned by anyone but ourselves. No one can be forgiven – no one can be redeemed – save by their own heart.’
— , The Malevolent Seven They’re blind to a simple truth: complex minds can’t develop on their own. If they could, feral children would be like any others. And minds don’t grow the way weeds do, flourishing under indifferent attention; otherwise all children in orphanages would thrive. For a mind to even approach its full potential, it needs cultivation by other minds.
— , Exhalation Why do we want other people to like us, even if we don’t really care about them all that much? I don’t know why, but it’s true.
— , The Year of the Flood Life was indeed a continuous lesson in finding ways to be less troubled by certain things, so that we might make room for new concerns, which arrived with the promptness and regularity of mail coaches.
— , Eversion One of our signature flaws as a species: we will risk almost anything to avoid looking stupid.
— , The Glass Hotel This is what a child needs: for a parent to be a container for their emotions. This means you are alongside them and know and accept what they feel but you are not being overwhelmed by their feelings. This is one of the things psychotherapists do for their clients.
— , The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read Always plan for the worst, child; that way, all your surprises will be pleasant ones.
— , The Dragon Reborn Well, here I am on the floor, he thought. Is life so much worse here than it would be on the bed, or even in a totally different location? No, life is exactly the same. Life is the thing you bring with you inside your own head.
— , Normal People