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1 " The worst thing about having power over other people's lives is that you sometimes get things wrong. "
― Fredrik Backman , Beartown (Beartown, #1)
2 " No one goes through this life unscathed. No matter what one sees in other people's lives that might seem better than one's own, that's only on the surface. No one knows what goes on beneath. Envy is an exercise in futility, since not one person gets out of this life alive. "
3 " Many will argue that there is nothing remotely spiritual in combat. Consider this. Mystical or religious experiences have four common components: constant awareness of one's own inevitable death, total focus on the present moment, the valuing of other people's lives above one's own, and being part of a larger religious community such as the Sangha, ummah, or church. All four of these exist in combat. The big difference is that the mystic sees heaven and the warrior sees hell. Whether combat is the dark side of the same version, or only something equivalent in intensity, I simply don't know. I do know that at the age of fifteen I had a mystical experience that scared the hell out of me and both it and combat put me into a different relationship with ordinary life and eternity.Most of us, including me, would prefer to think of a sacred space as some light-filled wonderous place where we can feel good and find a way to shore up our psyches against death. We don't want to think that something as ugly and brutal as combat could be involved in any way with the spiritual. However, would any practicing Christian say that Calvary Hill was not a sacred space? "
― Karl Marlantes , What It is Like to Go to War
4 " I suppose that's what happens when you make other people's lives miserable: life gets miserable back at you. "
― Sonya Hartnett , Surrender
5 " Unhappy people often insist on trying to uncover the full magnitude of their unhappiness, or choose to investigate other people's lives as a distraction from their own. "
― Javier Marías , To Begin at the Beginning
6 " My first book was called, 'Mountain, Get Out of My Way,' where I did an autobiographical sketch, if you will, looking back at myself and looking back at things in my life, and juxtaposing them against things that are happening in other people's lives and trying to be motivational. "