Quotes

Question 1

..the more pleasures a man captures, the more masters will he have to serve.

Answer 1

A Guide to the Good Life, William Braxton Irvine

Question 2

…it’s always been private occasions that make me feel connected to the joys and sorrows of the world, often in the form of communication with writers and musicians I’ll never meet in person

Answer 2

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking, Susan Cain

Question 3

Your heart is a compass, and it is your greatest gift. If you’re ever lost, you just open it up, and it will always steer you in the right direction.

Answer 3

Into the Magic Shop, James Doty

Question 4

I had been chasing the wrong thing, and a heart ignored for too long will always make itself heard.

Answer 4

Into the Magic Shop, James Doty

Question 5

How can you ever be prepared to die? “Do what the Buddhists do. Every day, have a little bird on your shoulder that asks, ‘Is today the day? Am I ready? Am I doing all I need to do? Am I being the person I want to be?’”

Answer 5

Tuesday’s with Morrie, Mitch Albom

Question 6

…if you’re trying to show off for people at the top, forget it. They will look down at you anyhow. And if you’re trying to show off for people at the bottom, forget it. They will only envy you. Status will get you nowhere. Only an open heart will allow you to float equally between everyone.

Answer 6

Tuesday’s with Morrie, Mitch Albom

Question 7

Death is a stripping away of all that is not you. The secret of life is to “die before you die” — and find that there is no death

Answer 7

The Power of Now, Eckhart Tolle

Question 8

“Nothing is good or bad, but thinking makes it so”

Answer 8

Shakespeare

Conversationally Speaking, Alan Garner

Question 9

Think of your beliefs as houseguests that are welcome to stick around for a while but might wear out their welcome.

Answer 9

Andy Norman - Philosopher, JRE Podcast

Question 10

The precise person you are now is fleeting, just like all the other people you’ve been.

Answer 10

Range, David Epstein

Question 11

…the only trick of friendship, I think, is to find people who are better than you are—not smarter, not cooler, but kinder, and more generous, and more forgiving—and then to appreciate them for what they can teach you, and try to listen to them when they tell you something about yourself, no matter how bad—or good—it might be, and to trust them, which is the hardest thing of all.

Answer 11

A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara

Question 12

“Did what I want happen? No. Then my aim or my methods were wrong. I still have something to learn.” That is the voice of authenticity.

Answer 12

12 Rules For Life: An Antidote to Chaos, Jordan Peterson

Question 13

For her, religion was a quiet thing. Her faith was all her own. God was her confidant, her hope. In his eyes, she was her true self, nothing more, nothing less. She was the person George would never see.

Answer 13

All Things Cease to Appear, Elizabeth Brundage

Question 14

Tomas did not realize at the time that metaphors are dangerous. Metaphors are not to be trifled with. A single metaphor can give birth to love.

Answer 14

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

Question 15

Tomas came to this conclusion: Making love with a woman and sleeping with a woman are two separate passions, not merely different but opposite. Love does not make itself felt in the desire for copulation (a desire that extends to an infinite number of women) but in the desire for shared sleep (a desire limited to one woman).

Answer 15

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

Question 16

Indeed, the only truly serious questions are ones that even a child can formulate. Only the most naive of questions are truly serious. They are the questions with no answers. A question with no answer is a barrier that cannot be breached. In other words, it is questions with no answers that set the limits of human possibilities, describe the boundaries of human existence

Answer 16

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

Question 17

I have said before that metaphors are dangerous. Love begins with a metaphor. Which is to say, love begins at the point when a woman enters her first word into our poetic memory.

Answer 17

The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera

Question 18

“To fear death, gentleman, is nothing other than to think oneself wise when one is not; for it is to think one knows what one does not know. No man knows whether death may not even turn out to be the greatest of blessings for a human being; and yet people fear it as if they knew for certain that it is the greatest of evils.”

Answer 18

Socrates

Why People Believe Weird Things, Michael Shermer

Question 19

The line between self-deception and willpower is often blurred…

Answer 19

Where Reasons End, Yiyun Li

Question 20

Sometimes it’s hard to explain why some men suddenly do the things they do…But we are always optimists when it comes to time; we think there will be time to do things with other people. And time to say things to them.

Answer 20

A Man Called Ove, Fredrik Backman

Question 21

…better to get hurt by the truth than comforted with a lie.

Answer 21

The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

Question 22

“Remember, Amir agha. There’s no monster, just a beautiful day.”

Answer 22

The Kite Runner, Khaled Hosseini

Question 23

He belongs to time, and by the horror that seizes him, he recognizes his worst enemy. Tomorrow, he was longing for tomorrow, whereas everything in him ought to reject it. That revolt of the flesh is the absurd.

Answer 23

The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus

Question 24

It’s always a marvel when one’s pain doesn’t settle into bitterness, but brings forth kindness instead.

Answer 24

The Book of Longings, Sue Monk Kidd

Question 25

No assurance, no platitude, no promise of God’s mercy. Just a stark reminder that death was part of life. She offered me nothing but a way to accept whatever came—Let life be life.

Answer 25

The Book of Longings, Sue Monk Kidd

Question 26

I’ve always been afraid of dying. I don’t know why I thought this would jinx it from actually happening.

Answer 26

They Both Die at the End, Adam Silvera

Question 27

In bed, I thought. I thought those thoughts all men think when a woman tells them she’s pregnant: what would the baby look like? Would I like it? Would I love it? And then, more crushingly: fatherhood. With all its responsibilities and fulfillments and tedium and possibilities for failure.

Answer 27

A Little Life, Hanya Yanagihara

Question 28

She knew she should be experiencing pity and despair for her feline friend–and she was–but she had to acknowledge something else. As she stared at Voltaire’s still and peaceful expression–that total a sense of pain–there was an inescapable feeling brewing in the darkness. Envy.

Answer 28

The Midnight Library, Matt Haig

Question 29

She had thought, in her nocturnal and suicidal hours, that solitude was the problem. But that was because it hadn’t been true solitude. The lonely mind in the busy city yearns for connection because it thinks human-to-human connection is the point of everything. But amid pure nature (or the ‘tonic of wildness’ as Thoreau called it) solitude took on a different character. It became in itself a kind of connection. A connection between herself and the world. And between her and herself.

Answer 29

The Midnight Library, Matt Haig

Question 30

Maybe that’s what all lives were, though. Maybe even the most seemingly perfectly intense or worthwhile lives ultimately felt the same. Acres of disappointment and monotony and hurts and rivalries but with flashes of wonder and beauty.

Answer 30

The Midnight Library, Matt Haig

Question 31

She realized that you could be as honest as possible in life, but people only see the truth if it is close enough to their reality. As Thoreau wrote, ‘It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.’

Answer 31

The Midnight Library, Matt Haig

Question 32

It was interesting, she mused to herself, how life sometimes simply gave you a whole new perspective by waiting around long enough for you to see it.

Answer 32

The Midnight Library, Matt Haig

Question 33

Here is what I learned: trying too hard makes it harder to get the results you want. Here is what I realized: behind almost every failure of my whole life I had made the same error. When I’d failed, it was rarely because I hadn’t tried enough, it was because I’d been trying too hard.

Answer 33

Effortless, Greg McKeown

Question 34

If there are processes in your life that seem to involve an inordinate number of steps, try starting from zero. Then see if you can find your way back to those same results, only take fewer steps.

Answer 34

Effortless, Greg McKeown

Question 35

So if you are feeling overwhelmed by an essential project because you think you have to produce something flawless from the outset, simply lower the bar to start. Whether it’s writing a book, composing a song, painting a canvas, or any other creative pursuit that calls to you, inspiration flows from the courage to start with rubbish.

Answer 35

Effortless, Greg McKeown

Question 36

Holding back when you still have steam in you might seem like a counterintuitive approach to getting important things done, but in fact, this kind of restraint is key to breakthrough productivity.

Answer 36

Effortless, Greg McKeown

Question 37

Whatever has happened to you in life. Whatever hardship. Whatever pain. However significant those things are. They pale in comparison to the power you have to choose what to do now.

Answer 37

Effortless, Greg McKeown

Question 38

I operate under the assumption that any given person, if I got to know them, would be completely worthy of love and consideration and kindness.

Answer 38

Hope Nation

Question 39

The beautiful thing about hope is that it doesn’t give up on you. It waits around for you to notice it. Like being up early enough to catch the sunrise.

Answer 39

Hope Nation

Question 40

This was a new skill she’d acquired, the ability to look, to the outside world, utterly serene and even cheerful, while, in her skull, all was chaos

Answer 40

The Circle, Dave Eggers

Question 41

“We make our moments, Ana, or we do not.”

Answer 41

The Book of Longings, Sue Monk Kidd

Question 42

Bold and bright, a trilogy of happiness would continue for summer’s duration and into autumn. It would then be brought abruptly to an end, for the brightness had shown suffering the way.

Answer 42

The Book Thief, Markus Zusak

Question 43

He had an idea that even when beaten he could steal a little victory by laughing at defeat.

Answer 43

East of Eden, John Steinbeck

Question 44

Perhaps the best conversationalist in the world is the man who helps others talk.

Answer 44

East of Eden, John Steinbeck

Question 45

At the bottom of every one of your fears is simply the fear that you can’t handle whatever life may bring you.

Answer 45

Feel the Fear…and Do it Anyway, Susan Jeffers

Question 46

Whatever the needs of the moment, I had a choice: I could do what was required calmly, patiently, and attentively, or do it in a state of panic. Every moment of the day—indeed, every moment throughout one’s life—offers an opportunity to be relaxed and responsive or suffer unnecessarily.

Answer 46

Waking Up, Sam Harris

Question 47

Seems like after that we were all grown up and everything was different. It’s the way of things. One day you’re all family together, fighting and hugging from one moment to the next, and then it’s all gone. You’re off making your own family, scared of what’s coming next, and Lord, things have a way of running faster and faster all the time.

Answer 47

Bastard Out of Carolina, Dorothy Allison

Question 48

So there is a difference between insisting that we always feel good about ourselves (which is narcissistic and synonymous with constantly preserving our self-esteem) and insisting that we regard ourselves as important or valuable (which is healthy self love). Understanding and making this distinction is a prerequisite for mature mental health.

Answer 48

The Road Less Traveled and Beyond, M. Scott Peck

Question 49

I remember, as a kid, when I first understood that only half of every tree is visible, that the roots in the soil are equal to the branches in the sky, that a whole other half is underground. It took me a lot longer, well into adulthood, to realize people are like that too.

Answer 49

All Our Wrong Todays, Elan Mastai

Question 50

Imagine forgiving yourself completely. The goals you didn’t reach. The mistakes you made. Instead of locking those flaws inside to define and repeat yourself, imagine letting your past float through your present and away like air through a window, freshening a room. Imagine that.

Answer 50

The Comfort Book, Matt Haig

Question 51

Humility is often misunderstood. It’s not a matter of having low self-confidence. One of the Latin roots of humility means “from the earth.” It’s about being grounded—recognizing that we’re flawed and fallible. Confidence is a measure of how much you believe in yourself. Evidence shows that’s distinct from how much you believe in your methods. You can be confident in your ability to achieve a goal in the future while maintaining the humility to question whether you have the right tools in the present. That’s the sweet spot of confidence.

Answer 51

Think Again, Adam Grant

Question 52

In his forty-third year William Stoner learned what others, much younger, had learned before him: that the person one loves at first is not the person one loves at last, and that love is not an end but a process through which one person attempts to know another.

Answer 52

Stoner, John Williams

Question 53

He didn’t care if they really felt that way or not: he just needed them to say it, he needed to feel that something lay beneath their imperturbable calm, that somewhere within them ran a thin stream of quick, cool water, teeming with delicate lives, minnows and grasses and tiny white flowers, all tender and easily wounded and so vulnerable you couldn’t see them without aching for them.

Answer 53

A Little Life, Hanya Yanigihara

Question 54

And yet he sometimes wondered if he could ever love anyone as much as he loved Jude. It was the fact of him, of course, but also the utter comfort of life with him, of having someone who had known him for so long and who could be relied upon to always take him as exactly who he was on that particular day. His work, his very life, was one of disguises and charades. Everything about him and his context was constantly changing: his hair, his body, where he would sleep that night. He often felt he was made of something liquid, something that was being continually poured from bright-colored bottle to bright-colored bottle, with a little being lost or left behind with each transfer. But his friendship with Jude made him feel that there was something real and immutable about who he was, that despite his life of guises, there was something elemental about him, something that Jude saw even when he could not, as if Jude’s very witness of him made him real.

Answer 54

A Little Life, Hanya Yanigihara

Question 55

He was tugged, in those days, between trying to resign himself to the fact that his life would forever more be what it was, and the hope, small and stupid and stubborn as it was, that it could be something else. The balance—between resignation and hope—shifted by the day, by the hour, sometimes by the minute. He was always, always trying to decide how he should be—if his thoughts should be of acceptance or of escape.

Answer 55

A Little Life, Hanya Yanigihara

Question 56

He will be someone who is defined, first and always, by what he is missing.

Answer 56

A Little Life, Hanya Yanigihara

Question 57

My whole life I thought my job was to build this perfect sandcastle and keep it safe. But when the castle finally fell apart, I could suddenly see everything beyond it—the beach, the ocean, the waves.

Answer 57

The Awakened Brain, Lisa Miller

Question 58

The clouds above us join and separate,
The breeze in the courtyard leaves and returns.
Life is like that, so why not relax?
Who can stop us from celebrating?

Answer 58

The Tao of Pooh, Benjamin Hoff

Question 59

She had this laugh. I swear it’s why I married her, Laila, for that laugh. It bulldozed you. You stood no chance against it.

Answer 59

A Thousand Splendid Suns, Khaled Hosseini

Question 60

“I’ll give you what I learned from all this,” he said. “Accept what people offer. Drink their milkshakes. Take their love.”

Answer 60

She’s Come Undone, Wally Lamb

Question 61

There is shame like rust working its way through his body.

Answer 61

The Power, Naomi Alderman

Question 62

It doesn’t matter that she shouldn’t, that she never would. What matters is that she could, if she wanted. The power to hurt is a kind of wealth.

Answer 62

The Power, Naomi Alderman

Question 63

There is a noise that is different to grief. Sadness wails and cries out and lets loose a sound to the heavens like a baby calling for its mother. That kind of noisy grief is hopeful. It believes that things can be put right, or that help can come. There is a different kind of sound to that. Babies left alone too long do not even cry. They become very still and quiet. They know no one is coming.

Answer 63

The Power, Naomi Alderman

Question 64

Why are people always hurrying, Stan? You miss so much when you’re dashing here, there, and everywhere. You’ve got to take a moment to feel the sun on your face.

Answer 64

The Brilliant Life of Eudora Honeysett, Annie Lyons

Question 65

As the months passed, he began to feel as though something in his chest were loosening, as though something that had kept a grip on his heart had begun to let go. And then one night, the image of a full-blown rose unfolding petal by petal from its tightly wrapped bud came to him in a brief wordless dream and he woke from it, shattered, face wet with tears shed in sleep.

Answer 65

The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell

Question 66

Head against the wooden door, hands gripping the frame, he listened until the weeping was over, and learned the sound of desolation.

Answer 66

The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell

Question 67

Self-disclosure is almost like sex, she thought. It isn’t easy to bare your soul.

Answer 67

The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell

Question 68

There are moments, she thought later, when reality seems to shift suddenly, like shards of colored glass in a kaleidoscope.

Answer 68

The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell

Question 69

…though she was a woman of highly trained intelligence, she passed all experience through her heart.

Answer 69

The Sparrow, Mary Doria Russell

Question 70

Everyone in the room, including William, laughed, and Julia thought he looked a little teary in the middle of the action. She made her way to him and whispered, “Are we too much for you?”

Answer 70

Hello Beautiful, Ann Napolitano

Question 71

He squeezed her hand, a gesture she understood meant both yes and no.

Answer 71

Hello Beautiful, Ann Napolitano

Question 72

“For every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.” - Walt Whitman

Answer 72

Hello Beautiful, Ann Napolitano

Question 73

William turned toward her and found himself looking directly into Sylvie’s eyes. He had the strange sense that she was looking inside him, to the truth of him. He hadn’t known this was possible. When Julia gazed at William, she was trying to see the man she wanted him to be. She couldn’t see, or didn’t want to see, who he actually was.

Answer 73

Hello Beautiful, Ann Napolitano

Question 74

Charlie had been deemed a failure in his lifetime, but almost 30 years after his death, his daughters’ love for him ran so deep that he could be considered the most successful person William had ever known. People still came up to Sylvie in the library, after all this time, to tell her about a kind thing her father had done for them.

Answer 74

Hello Beautiful, Ann Napolitano

Question 75

“A man, to be forgiven, will do anything,” he said.

Answer 75

The Little Liar, Mitch Albom

Question 76

You have debated for centuries about what true love means. Some say it is when another’s happiness means more to you than your own. Others say it is when you cannot imagine the world without your partner. For me, true love is easy. It’s the kind where you do not lie to yourself.

Answer 76

The Little Liar, Mitch Albom

Question 77

She doesn’t speak, but the undercurrent–the unspoken conversation that flows endlessly between them–is loud. Shay is the girl wearing pajamas with pink clouds on them the first time he entered her room, and she is the woman who will give birth to their daughter ten years from now, and she is this young woman, her face wide open, offering him everything. Edward hears his brother’s voice inside him. Jordan tells him not to waste any time. Not to waste any love. He watches Shay lean in his direction, and when she kisses him, she blots out the entire sky.

Answer 77

Dear Edward, Ann Napolitano

Question 78

A different daughter might have been reassured, but I looked at my mother and saw a person directing all of her energy toward being outwardly composed because the inside was a lost cause.

Answer 78

Danielle Evans, The Office of Historical Corrections

Question 79

People said there was no way to understand Gon. I didn’t agree with them. It’s just that nobody ever tried to see through him.

Answer 79

Almond, Won-Pyung Sohn

Question 80

Mom was a person who could find constellations even from a dizzy wallpaper.

Answer 80

Almond, Won-Pyung Sohn