💬 Quotes

"I looked at the world, not just the objects in it, but also the light, the way it played on surfaces, the way it changed things."

"You see the world as it is, Griet. That is a rare gift. Most people only see what they expect to see."

"There is a quality to light that can be captured, but only if you are willing to let it consume you."

"I was not a girl anymore. I was a painting. I was the light. I was the shadow."

"It is a dangerous thing to look too closely at the world. You might see something you are not meant to see."

"You must understand that a painting is never finished. It only stops in interesting places."

"The small luncheon party, the stone lion, the view of the lake—these were the things that made up the pattern of my life, which I had thought were merely the beginning."

"You know, there’s something very unnatural about a Catholic who isn’t a bit ashamed of himself."

"Hope is the thing with feathers / That perches in the soul"

"I dwell in Possibility – / A fairer House than Prose –"

"Because I could not stop for Death – / He kindly stopped for me –"

"Tell all the truth but tell it slant – / Success in Circuit lies"

"The Soul selects her own Society – / Then – shuts the Door –"

"This is my letter to the World / That never wrote to Me –"

"People said Ove saw the world in black and white. But she was color. All the color he had."

"Loving someone is like moving into a house. At first, you fall in love with all the new things, amazed every morning that all this belongs to you, as if fearing that someone would suddenly come rushing in through the door to explain that a terrible mistake had been made, you weren't supposed to live in a wonderful place like this. Then, over the years, the walls become weathered, the wood splits here and there, and you start to love that house not so much because of all its perfections, but for its imperfections."

"He was a man of absolute convictions. Time was something you didn't waste. People were something you dealt with only when absolutely necessary."

"We're so afraid of time, time and the fact that there's so little of it. We fear that it'll run out and leave us behind. But the worst fear is not that it will end, but that it will just go on with us in it."

"It is a curious thing, the grief that when you lose someone, you have to learn how to live again, from the very beginning."

"In the end, you are what you do. Not what you say, not what you think, but what you actually do."