She just smiled, said that she loved books more than anything, and started telling him excitedly what each of the ones in her lap was about. And Ove realised that he wanted to hear her talking about the things she loved for the rest of his life.
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.
He went through life with his hands firmly shoved into his pockets. She danced.
One morning you wake up with more life behind you than in front of you, not being able to understand how it’s happened.
At a certain age almost all the questions a person asks him or herself are really just about one thing: how should you live your life?
Soccer forces life to move on. There’s always a new match. A new season. There’s always a dream that everything can get better. It’s a game of wonders.
One of the plainest truths about both towns and individuals is that they usually don't turn into what we tell them to be, but what they are told they are.
Something inside a man goes to pieces when he has to bury the only person who ever understood him. There is no time to heal that sort of wound.
Just because you don’t like peanut butter doesn’t necessarily mean you can’t like . . . peanuts.
Každé manželstvo má svoje zlé stránky, lebo každý človek má nejakú slabosť. A každý, kto s niekým žije, sa s jeho slabosťou istým spôsobom naučí zaobchádzať. Môže ju vnímať napríklad ako nesmierne tažký kus nábytku a naučiť sa upratovať okolo neho. Aby sa nenarušila ilúzia. Samozrejme, je mu jasné, že pod nábytkom sa hromadí špina, no naučí sa ju odsúvať tak ďaleko, aby ju nevideli hostia. Potom však jedného dňa ktosi bez opýtania odsunie nábytok a všetko vyjde najavo. Špina aj ryhy. Trvalé poškodenie parkiet. No a vtedy je už neskoro.
A time like that comes for every man, when he choses what sort of man he wants to be. And if you don't know the story, you don't know the man.
