The Perishing
Natashia Deón
Top 10 Best Quotes
“You can know how many seeds are in an apple. But you cannot know how many apples are in a seed.”
“The past doesn’t matter,” he says. “The past is the past whether it was good or not. Because if it was good, then you know it can be good again. If it was bad, you can change who you are and show people that it doesn’t always have to be bad. That’s all the past is good for.”
“Others will call your joy a fiction or call you a liar or immoral or dangerous for your happiness, but their conclusions are only a reflection of their limited imaginations, their own abilities, their being stuck in their lives. It’s not a rewrite of yours.”
“no one thinks herself a bigot,” she says. “It’s 1931, and even now, with all of the race separation by neighborhoods, jobs, marriage and churches, with police, no one will see herself a bigot. She’ll simply point to someone more bigoted than she is and say, ‘See, there’s a bigot.”
“What are we?” I say. “Human,” she says. “Fighters,” she says. “And our survival depends on our collective abilities, not our individual might. That’s what it means to be human.”
“We lie about what we really wanted because we don't want to feel rejected - a form of abandonment...But not asking for what we want is worse. Self-abandonment. And when we agree to relationships and situations we don't want because we can't bear to be alone or don't have the courage to ask, we become a victim of that non-asked for thing, grieving for ourselves...You can choose differently.”
“We cope with stories we tell ourselves about the lost thing and those involved, and these stories include lies like “I never wanted it anyway.” We lie about what we really wanted because we don’t want to feel rejected—a form of abandonment. Makes us feel abandoned. But not asking for what we want is worse. Self-abandonment. And when we agree to relationships and situations we don’t want because we can’t bear to be alone or don’t have the courage to ask, we become a victim of that not-asked-for thing, grieving for ourselves. But the truth is, you abandoned yourself way back there. You can choose differently.”
“The couple explodes into laughter because of it, and I’ll admit it hurts me. It hurts me for this stranger, this girl who’s running and is different like me, like a foreign object out of place, in a time when the thoughts of other strangers begin with how to get rid of us.”
“People like us who believe in physics know that the distinction between past, present, and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion. ALBERT EINSTEIN at best we will lose each other at something we have been taught to call the end.”
“People I saw were hurting, I was a nurse and couldn’t let how others behaved affect how I treated them. Even the cruel ones, I treated with—” “Mercy?” “Not mercy. Respect,” she says. “Compassion,” she says. “Mercy assumes you have power. Something you can decide to give or not. Compassion is kind anyway.”
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Book Keywords:
life-lessons
