whatROX

@roxbirr

a blog about my favorite things FOOD | BOOKS | TRAVEL | and more

797 posts

We can’t always know the people we love as well as we think we do, Marisol. Our love is tangled up in our expectations, our perception of reality, and you never know what people really think. They often keep their deepest emotion locked away.

Next Year in Havana by Chanel Cleeton

The most powerful determinant of who you are is inside you.

- Educated by Tara Westover

Marriage is between two people. There is no studio audience.

- An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

There are too many loose ends in the world in need of knots. You can’t attend to all of them, but you have to try.

- Big Roy in An American Marriage by Tayari Jones

We want to be loved. Failing that, admired; failing that, feared; failing that, hated and despised. At all costs we want to stir up some sort of feeling in others. The soul abhors a vacuum. At all costs it longs for contact.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

p. 355

Don't kick the shit, it'll go all over the place.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

p. 244

He who fights with monsters should look to it that he himself does not become a monster. And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss also gazes into you.

Friedrich Nietzsche

Woman: It's hard to help those who don't want to help themselves. Elsa: Someone who wants to help himself is possibly not the one who most needs help from others.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

p. 213

There's nothing wrong with being different. Granny said that only different people change the world.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

p. 213

Because not all monsters look like monsters. There are some that carry their monstrosity inside.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

p. 130

People who have never been hunted always seem to think there's a reason for it. 'They wouldn't do it without a cause, would they? You must have done something to provoke them.' As if that's how oppression works.

My Grandmother Asked Me to Tell You She’s Sorry by Fredrik Backman

p. 80

We never know what will happen next, what we will see, and what important person will come into our life, or what important person we will lose. Life is change, constant change, and unless we are lucky enough to find comedy in it, change is nearly always a drama, if not a tragedy. But after everything, and even when the skies turn scarlet and threatening, I still believe that if we are lucky enough to be alive, we must give thanks for the miracle of every moment of every day, no matter how flawed. And we must have faith in God, and in the Universe, and in a better tomorrow, even if faith is not always deserved.

Pino Lella’s prescription for a long, happy life in Beneath a Scarlet Sky

Page 508-509

To be young and in love. Isn’t it remarkable that something like that can happen in the middle of a war? It says something about the inherent gooodness of life, despite all the evil we’ve seen.

Uncle Albert from Beneath a Scarlet Sky

Page 406

The best thing is to grieve for the people you loved and lost, and then welcome and love the new people life puts in front of you.

Anna from Beneath a Scarlet Sky

Page 302

You can’t carry the world’s problems on your back. You have to find happiness in your life, and just do your best with the rest.

Anna from Beneath a Scarlet Sky

Page 299

One could not count the moons that shimmer on her roofs,

Or the thousand splendid suns that hide behind her walls

- Saeb-e-Tabrizi

For what shall it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own soul.

Mark 8:36

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