As the year comes to a close, I picked one favourite quote from each of the 52 books read and organized them by theme. Be my friend on Goodreads so we can peep each other’s reads throughout the year:) A small tweak on this for next year – I will start a working document to jot down favourite quotes as I read. That way I can prevent this last minute scramble!
On Food
Eat food. Not too much. Mostly Plants
-Michael Pollan (Food Rules)
You have to be a romantic to invest yourself, your money, and your time in cheese.
-Anthony Bourdain (Medium Raw)
Cooking is all about connection, I've learned, between us and other species, other times, other cultures (human and microbial both), but, most important, other people.
-Michael Pollan (Cooked)
One cannot think well, love well, sleep well if one has not dined well.
-Virginia Woolf (A Room of One's Own)
On Understanding
One good way to understand a complex system is to disturb it and then see what happens. ― Michael Pollan (How to Change Your Mind) “Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We convince ourselves that we know the other person well, but do we really know anything important about anyone?” ― Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle) But people themselves alter so much, that there is something new to be observed in them forever. -Jane Austen (Pride & Prejudice)
On Grieving
Things that I Hope Are True about heaven That the radio always plays what would have been your favourite songs. That there's always coffee if you want it. That you're there. That it's real. -Neil Hillborn (Our Numbered Days) The way memory gets up after someone has died and starts walking. -Victoria Chang (Obit)
On Longing
We're both looking at the same moon, in the same world. We're connected to reality by the same line. All I have to do is quietly draw it towards me. -Haruki Murakami (Sputnik Sweetheart)
On Life Questions
You take many things from the world, but I wonder what you will give back in return? -Genzaburo Yoshino (How Do You Live?) Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life? -Mary Oliver (Devotions) 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? -Fredrik Backman (Britt-Marie was Here)
On Existensialism
When I give up the fish, I get, at long last, that thing I had been searching for: a mantra, a trick, a prescription for hope. I get the promise that there are good things in store. Not because I deserve them. Not because I worked for them But because they are as much a part of Chaos as destruction and loss. Life, the flip side of death. Growth, of rot. -Lulu Miller (Why Fish Don't Exist) From the beginning, I knew my destination, and I chose my route accordingly. But am I working toward an extreme joy, or of pain? Will I achieve a minimum, or a maximum -Ted Chiang (Stories of Your Life and Others) I do feel comforted to discover I'm not the only person on this earth who has no idea what life is for, nor what is to be done with all this time aside from filling it. -Zadie Smith (Intimations)
On Social Intelligence
...individuals are honest only to the extent that suits them (including their desire to please others) -Dan Ariely (Predictably Irrational) To injure an opponent is to injure yourself. To control aggression without inflicting injury is the Art of Peace. -Morihei Uesiba (The Art of Peace) Negotiate in their world. Persuasion is not about how bright or smooth or forceful you are. It's about the other party convincing themselves that the solution you want is their own idea. So don't beat them with logic or brute force. Ask them questions that open paths to your goals. It not about you. -Chris Voss (Never Split the Difference)
On Theory/Method
Colors present themselves in continuous flux, constantly related to changing neighbours and changing conditions. -Josef Albers (Interaction of Color) ...beauty lies not in the object itself, but in the pattern of the shadows created by each object, the light and the darkness. -Junchiro Tanizaki (In Praise of Shadows) ...the house shelters day-dreaming, the house protects the dreamer, the house allows one to dream in peace. -Gaston Bachelard ( (the Poetics of Space) ....the brain continuously forecasts what the world will be like a fifth of a second from now...That means that we never see the world as it is...but as it will be a fraction of a moment in the future. We spend our whole lives in other words, living in a world that doesn't quite exist yet. -Bill Bryson (the Body) First, never underestimate the power of inertia. Second, that power can be harnessed. -Richard H. thaler and Cass R Sunstein (Nudge)
On Manifesting
If you are interested in something, you will focus on it, and if you focus attention on anything it is likely that you will become interested in it. Many of the things we find interesting are not so by nature, but because we took the trouble of paying attention to them. -Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (Flow) If you believe something enough, it can become real...We are what we believe. We find what we go looking for. And what we predict, comes to pass. -Rutger Bregman (Humankind) So early in life, I had learned that if you want something, you had better make some noise. -Malcolm , as told by Alex Haley (The Autobiography of Malcolm X)
On Companionship
....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, but the best, as well. -Hanya Yanaghara (A Little life) But for all the fear, the pain, all that could not be redeemed, what I'll remember for the rest of my days are the ones who never gave up on me , who led me back to my life. -Chanel Miller (Know my Name) Sometimes life doesn't let you choose your battles. Just the company you keep. -Fredrik Backman (Beartown)
On Romantic Love
I want to do with you what spring does with the cherry trees. - Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair) Life is one fool thing after another whereas love is two fool things after each other . -Oscar Wilde (The Happy Prince and Other Tales) And even if love doesn't last, acceptance gives us new beginnings. -Eddie Huang (Double Cup Love) May I be awake enough to notice when love appears and bold enough to pursue it without knowing where it will lead. -Suleika Jaouad (Between Two Kingdoms)
On Self
It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. -Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray) It would be unfair to expect other people to be as remarkable as oneself. -Oscar Wilde (Only Dull People are Brilliant at Breakfast)
On Outlook
I am learning that the difference between a garden and a graveyard is only what you choose to put in the ground. -Rudy Francisco (Helium) Ignore the awful times, and concentrate on the good ones. . -Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five) Victims focus on what they do not control. Survivors focus on what they do control. -Kevin M. Gilmartin (Emotional Survival for Law Enforcement) Fall in love with the problem, not the solution. -Marty Cagan (Inspired) The way to love anything is to realize that it might be lost. -Robert B. Cialdini (influence) I guess you could call it a "failure" but I prefer the term "learning experience" -Andy Weir (the Martian) It is perhaps when our lives are at their most problematic that we are likely to be most receptive to beautiful things. -Alain De Botton (the Architecture of Happiness) The trick to finding ideas is to convince yourself that everyone and everything has a story to tell. -Malcolm Gladwell (What the Dog Saw)
On Life Advice
How we decide to respond to our fears, that is the person we become. -Will Smith (Will) Not responding is a response-we are equally responsible for what we don't do. -Jonathan Safran Foer (Eating Animals) If it isn't a clear yes, then it's a clear no. -Greg Mckeown (Essentialism) Things can hurt and not harm us. In fact, they can even be good for us. And things that feel good can be very harmful to us -Boundaries (Henry Cloud) "The only time you've failed is if you didn't try once more." -Fredrik Backman (And Every Morning the Way Home Gets Longer and Longer)
On Transformation
And once the storm is over you won't remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won't even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won't be the same person who walked in. That's what this storm's all about. -Haruki Murakami (Kafka on the Shore) Change is guaranteed, but growth isn't...if you want to grow, you've got to want it. In fact, you've got to want it so bad that you'll toss out everything that got you where you are. -David Chang (Eat a Peach)
2023
Your new life is going to cost you your old one...
The people who are meant for you are going to meet you on the other side. You're going to build a new comfort zone around the things that actually move you forward. Instead of being liked, you're going to be loved. Instead of being understood, you're going to be seen.
All you're going to lose is what was built for a person you no longer are.
-Brianna Wiest (The Mountain is You)