The Coincidence Makers

The difference is simple: happy people look at their lives and see a series of choices. Miserable people see only a series of sacrifices.

Love demands change. Love demands work. Love isn’t a piece of candy you get for being a good boy so you have something that makes you feel good. It’s hard work. The hardest in the world.

Love is not a boom, it’s not explosions and effects. It’s not fireworks in the sky or a plane flying by with a large banner. It’s slowly poured under your skin, quietly, without you even noticing, like anointing oil. You just feel a type of warmth, and one day you wake up and discover that under your skin you are wrapped with someone else.

When the right person is beside you, you feel a sense of belonging anywhere.

Most of the big things in the world didn’t happen because someone was particularly wise, brave, or talented, but because there was someone who didn’t give up.

I think you'll be satisfied if you become disappointed in yourself,' she said quietly. 'It would further support the conclusion that you've already drawn anyway. It would reinforce your negative opinions about yourself. You don't do enough and then become angry at yourself for not doing enough.

Perhaps when you helped someone to achieve happiness that you yourself would no longer experience, you also gained a small piece of that happiness.

(M)aking any choice also means relinquishing its alternative... The choice to do nothing is also a choice... The correct choice is usually also the most frightening choice because a bit more courage is needed in order to choose it.

Love derives from friction between two people. Like matches, like an ice skate, like falling stars that light up when they scratch the air, we need friction in order for something to happen in our lives.

At the far left ... are all of the people who really think that everything is completely coincidental ... And on the other end are all of the people who are sure that there's a reason for everything ... The people standing at the two extremes are the happiest people in the world. At both ends. Do you know why? because they they don't ask why. Never. Not at all. There's no point, because either they believe there's no answer, or they believe that someone is responsible for the answer and that it's none of their business. But these people aren't even one-thousandth of the population. Most people stand in the range between them. No, they don't stand. They go, they move. They constantly move in one direction and then the other. They think they're on one of the sides, but occasionally, nonetheless, they ask themselves why and don't understand that they'll be happy only if they let go of this question, for whatever reason.

....you couldn’t allow yourself to be in a bad mood or show despondency. You had to take the little spoon of your personality and dig deep in the cold ground until you reached water that you could serve to someone else despite your own thirst.

Every choice entails giving something up, and the courage required to make that sacrifice depends on how much you want something.

It's strange, she thought, how we're able to turn one specific thing into everything that drives us in life, and how we convince ourselves that without this thing there is no meaning in anything. And it's even stranger how quickly we get used to the opposite thought.

Our role is to be exactly on the border, to stand in the gray area between fate and free will, and to play Ping-Pong there.

Happy people look at their lives and see a series of choices. Miserable people see only a series of things they sacrificed.

What was the specific point when I realized that I was in love with you? What was the equilibrium point, before which you like someone and after which he's the center of your universe?

You're not desperate, you're not even really alone. You're longing....

You don't always have to decide. You can simply feel, flow with what is happening and the decision will emerge on its own.

Some... understand that the correct choice is indeed the more frightening one. In order to avoid this fear, they create a complex mechanism of self-deception that leads them to both fear the incorrect choice and choose it.

There's always a broader picture. There's always something beyond the system you're concentrating on. Never forget that. There are no clear boundaries. Life doesn't stop at the boundaries of the table. And there are always more than six pockets you can fall into. There is always something beyond. Always, always, always.

Everything had to happen quickly now, before she changed her mind. Before she felt optimistic again. Half-depressed people always worried that hope would catch them unprepared, and all that despair would go to waste.

First of all, you are secret agents. Except all the others are first of all agents and then secondly secret, but you are first of all secret and to a certain extent, also agents.

..allowing the music produced by marketing alchemists specializing in teenage romance to flood her thoughts via thing earphone wires.

one must not, simply must not, try to define people in a single word. People are too complex. Falling into the trap of adjectives is the first stage of distorting your perception of the person