Kirchberger Sonja Quotes

Trying to understand her teenage daughter's behavior was like trying to listen to a recording of a symphony whose volume vacillated unpredictably from barely audible to deafening. She couldn't hear the music, and all she wanted to do was leave the room. ~ Sonja Yoerg

If I am to die tonight, let me die a fighter. ~ Gail Simone

Getting closer to someone doesn't necessarily clarify anything. It's like staring at an electron micrograph. You're closer but nothing's any simpler. ~ Sonja Yoerg

It was the first time since the accident that he heard Sonja laughing. As if it were pouring out of her, without the slightest possibility of stopping it, like she was being wrestled to the ground by her own giggling. She laughed and laughed and laughed until the vowels were rolling across the walls and floors, as if they meant to do away with the laws of time and space. It made Ove feel as if his chest were slowly rising out of the ruins of a collapsed house after an earthquake. It gave his heart space to beat again. ~ Fredrik Backman

Life is a Curious Thing. Winter turns to spring and Parvaneh passes her driving test. Of teaches Adrian how to change tires. The kid may have bought a Toyota, but that doesn't mean he's entirely beyond help, Ove explains to Sonja when he visits her one Sunday in April. The he shows her some photographs of Parvaneh's little boy. Four months old and as fat as a seal pup. Patrick has tried to force one of those cell phone camera things on Ove, but he doesn't trust them. So he walks around with a thick wad of paper copies inside his wallet instead, held together by a rubber band. Shows everyone he meets. Even the people who work at the florist's, ~ Fredrik Backman

Ove was, well, Ove was Ove. Something the people around her also kept telling Sonja.
He'd been a grumpy old man since he started elementary school, they insisted. And she could have someone so much better.
Maybe he
didn't write her poems or serenade her with songs or come home with expensive gifts. But he believed so strongly in things: justice and fair play and hard
work and a world where right just had to be right. Not so one could get a medal or a diploma or a slap on the back for it, but just because that was
how it was supposed to be. Not many men of his kind were made anymore, Sonja had understood. So she was holding on to this one. ~ Fredrik Backman

How she envied Diesel. He could love someone without knowing them. ~ Sonja Yoerg

The groan of the lake was the earth tuning for a song she was desperate to hear. ~ Sonja Yoerg

I studied acting for five years. I quit college at that point. You know, I go hard. When I know I'm supposed to go in a direction, I'm fully committed and I go all the way. Everything falls to the side and I'm all in. So I completely dove into acting even though I was almost 30. ~ Sonja Sohn

From Mooshum to Sonja, back and forth. They wouldn't look at each other. I'm gonna ask you to leave in a nice way, Joe. ~ Louise Erdrich

Courage lays within easy reach of a child who knows nothing of how easily understanding can unravel, leaving a set of rules that apply to nothing, and an empty heart. ~ Sonja Yoerg

All that is required to become an optimist is to have the goal and to practice it. The more you rehearse optimistic thoughts, the more 'natural' and 'ingrained' they will become. With time they will be part of you, and you will have made yourself into an altogether different person. ~ Sonja Lyubomirsky

One finds a way of living for the sake of someone else's future. And it wasn't as if Ove also died when Sonja left him. He just stopped living. ~ Fredrik Backman

Sleep: the stepchild of Death. ~ Nancy A. Collins

People prone to joyful anticipation, skilled at obtaining pleasure from looking forward and imagining future happy events, are especially likely to be optimistic and to experience intense emotions. ~ Sonja Lyubomirsky

Exercise may very well be the most effective instant happiness booster of all activities, ~ Sonja Lyubomirsky

My life is the longer version of Ice Princess. ~ Sonja De Lange

No one in our society needs to be told that exercise is good for us. Whether you are overweight or have a chronic illness or are a slim couch potato, you've probably heard or read this dictum countless times throughout your life. But has anyone told you-indeed, guaranteed you-that regular physical activity will make you happier? I swear by it. ~ Sonja Lyubomirsky

You cannot shake hands with the Devil and not get sulphur on your sleeve. ~ Nancy A. Collins

Why don't you just ease up a little bit, just be professional. Maybe you're over-investing - maybe you're caring a little too much. ~ Sonja Sohn

It is equally important to investigate wellness as it is to study misery. ~ Sonja Lyubomirsky

The combination of rumination and negative mood is toxic. Research shows that people who ruminate while sad or distraught are likely to feel besieged, powerless, self-critical, pessimistic, and generally negatively biased. ~ Sonja Lyubomirsky

She had gills while other people were breathing with lungs. There was, however, no point in dwelling on it, as it was too later to grow up differently. ~ Sonja Yoerg

It was morning distilled, the sun rising on a quiet world, a mute witness. To Liz, it was both the oldest miraculous event, and the newest. This one belonged to her, and she to it. ~ Sonja Yoerg

But for her there was no possibility of a clear conscience, merely the weak absolution of honesty, of confession.
She could not buy into the cycle of sin and penance. She would always remember what she had done, and it would always sting. She would not be washed clean. ~ Sonja Yoerg

We found that the happiest people take pleasure in other people's successes and show concern in the face of others' failures. A completely different portrait, however, has emerged of a typical unhappy person - namely, as someone who is deflated rather than delighted about his peers' accomplishments and triumphs and who is relieved rather than sympathetic in the face of his peers' failures and undoings. ~ Sonja Lyubomirsky

I use the term happiness to refer to the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one's life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile. ~ Sonja Lyubomirsky

All my life I have wanted to skate, and all my life I have skated. ~ Sonja Henie

Thus the key to happiness lies not in changing our genetic makeup (which is impossible) and not in changing our circumstances (i.e., seeking wealth or attractiveness or better colleagues, which is usually impractical), but in our daily intentional activities. ~ Sonja Lyubomirsky

If we observe genuinely happy people, we shall find that they do not just sit around being contented. They make things happen. They pursue new understandings, seek new achievements, and control their thoughts and feelings. In sum, our intentional, effortful activities have a powerful effect on how happy we are, over and above the effects of our set points and the circumstances in which we find themselves. If an unhappy person wants to experience interest, enthusiasm, contentment, peace, and joy, he or she can make it happen by learning the habits of a happy person. ~ Sonja Lyubomirsky

The girl's face hollowed with resignation; it had been a long time, but Sonja remembered what it was to have that face, what it was to feel you were no brighter than the dumbest man, no stronger than the weakest boy, and with those ideas crowding your head no wonder subordination was the only inevitable outcome. ~ Anthony Marra

Beauty don't ask for attention. ~ Sonja De Lange

Ideals and opportunities and social theorizing are just fine, but if you must understand only one thing, it is this: a warm hand and words whispered into the ear are what we want. Paths that can be seen and followed and walked upon are what we most need.
...And in the end, the thing that feeds us, no matter how tenuous, is what we will reach for. ~ Sonja Livingston

You always get that one person who hates you for absolutely no reason. ~ Sonja De Lange

It's a feeling of ice miles running under your blades, the wind splitting open to let you through, the earth whirling around you at the touch of your toe, and speed lifting you off the ice far from all things that can hold you down. ~ Sonja Henie

Made a wrong turn.ones or twice. ~ Sonja De Lange

Hiking's not for everyone. Notice the wilderness is mostly empty. ~ Sonja Yoerg

My own perception of cops was that they came into your neighborhood, they roughed up people that you loved for no reason and took them away. As a child you saw that. ~ Sonja Sohn

I was hers in ways that those with loyalties of convenience cannot fathom. I loved her beyond words and clothes, and yes beyond even pain. The strangest of things is the way the hungry always return to the very same hand. The hand they know. The one that cannot give. ~ Sonja Livingston

This is why Sonja Lyubomirsky, a leader in the scientific study of well-being, has written that she prefers the phrase "creation or construction of happiness" to the more popular "pursuit," since "research shows that it's in our power to fashion it for ourselves."13 ~ Shawn Achor

Those are the facts but not the truth, which does not even speak the same language. ~ Sonja Livingston

...Sonja had to switch off. She turned down that knob in her brain that let her take in the world at full blast... ~ Dorthe Nors

If we can accept as true that life circumstances are not the keys to happiness, we'll be greatly empowered to pursue happiness for ourselves. ~ Sonja Lyubomirsky

Happiness is not out there for us to find. The reason that it's not out there is that it's inside us. ~ Sonja Lyubomirsky

You look at me with eyes that see only honor and gallantry. The truth is darker yet. Being Sonja means being called to darkness and pain. And knowing that you have the power to alter and take the lives of many. A great many. And praying to the gods that you always choose the right side. ~ Gail Simone

In all likelihood, Sonja had more academic journal subscriptions than friends. She could explain advanced calculus to her fifth-form algebra teacher but couldn't tell a joke to a boy at lunch. ~ Anthony Marra

Take this....haters. ~ Sonja De Lange

To call the police is a really big deal because you don't snitch - that's the culture you grow up in. ~ Sonja Sohn

It turns out that the process of working toward a goal, participating in a valued and challenging activity, is as important to well-being as its attainment. ~ Sonja Lyubomirsky