“Purple is such a twisted, complex color - it conveys the passion of red, the sadness of blue, the depravity of black. Purple is neither happy nor sad. It is pain and despair but longing, too - fiery desire, beaten and bruised but struggling onward, determined to overcome, to move forward rather than retreat.”
“You must do today what nobody else will do, so tomorrow you can accomplish what others can’t.”
“Like we were just jagged puzzle pieces that made no sense alone but together we fit perfectly. That's what life is supposed to be like for normal people right? You find that other piece that matches yours that completes yours. And you make the jags and the crevices fit, even if they don't go in perfectly smooth, even if they require a few adjustments. You don't demand perfection you make it work and appreciate the parts that fit instead of obsessing about the small angles that don't.”
“What is a lie? It’s a distortion of reality, presented as reality.”
“What is a lie? It's a distortion of reality, presented as reality. We say it's a bad thing. We teach kids not to lie. We even put people in prison for lying. And yet there are lies all around us, and half the time we don't even really try to disguise it.”
“But to be the best, to reach the pinnacle, requires self-denial, sacrifice, discipline, humility, and preparation. You have to hurt yourself, scold yourself, analyze yourself, recognize your weaknesses at the same time try to eliminate them. And those weaknesses you can't eliminate must be minimized. You must create a plan that highlights your strengths and hides your flaws. You have to do more than simply want to win. Everybody wants to win, for goodness' sake. But precious few of us are willing to prepare to win. You must do things that are difficult, unpleasant, painful.”
“I’m a girl standing in a tornado, pretending like it isn’t even windy,”
“A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on.”
“You’re your own worst enemy, Marta always said to me. You don’t need anyone to torment you because you do it to yourself.”
“Purple is such a twisted, complex color—it conveys the passion of red, the sadness of blue, the depravity of black. Purple is neither happy nor sad. It is pain and despair but longing, too—fiery desire, beaten and bruised but struggling onward, determined to overcome, to move forward rather than retreat.”
“The Dick tells us that Denny once worked on some arson cases, but I'd wager a mortgage payment that those cases took place when you created fire by rubbing two sticks together so you could cook the stegosaurus you killed with a spear and dragged back to the cave.”
“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”
“You put on a mask. But don't you see? Nobody can really know you unless they know your extremes”
“off the bed to the left and run for the”
“that palpable odor pumped out through the”
“Minciunile sunt fascinante pentru că ele demască paradoxurile societății noastre”
“What is a lie? It’s a distortion of reality, presented as reality. We say it’s a bad thing. We teach kids not to lie. We even put people in prison for lying. And yet there are lies all around us, and half the time we don’t even really try to disguise it.”
“troubled. I hope I’m wrong. But I really need to run along. It was nice meeting you, Graham.” [Editor’s”
“He was the anchor in the water, while you rocked up and down on the waves.”
“Dreams suck. You think you’ve conquered something, you work on it over and over and tell yourself you’re getting better, you will yourself to get better, you congratulate yourself on getting better. And then you close your eyes at night, you drift off into another world, and suddenly your own brain is tapping you on the shoulder and saying, Guess what? You’re NOT better!”
“we were just jagged puzzle pieces that made no sense alone, but together we fit perfectly.”
“and, thus, the strength of the fire.” He’s taking”
“What happened in August of this year,”
“She sucks in her breath and lets the flames race along the comforter until they lick her and swallow her whole.”
“I'll bet you think my favorite color is red, don't you? Well, close. It's purple. Purple is such a twisted, complex color--it conveys the passion of red, the sadness of blue, the depravity of black. Purple is neither happy nor sad. It is pain and despair but longing, too--fiery desire, beaten and bruised but struggling onward, determined to overcome, to move forward rather than retreat.”
“A remark generally hurts in proportion to its truth.”
“Talamas as she races through her”
“There was a thing called Heaven; but all the same they used to drink enormous quantities of alcohol.”
“MONDAY, FEBRUARY 21, 2011 Port St. Lucie, Florida First impressions are important, and in his first full meeting with us as the Mets manager, Terry Collins makes a really good one. We are in a conference room in Digital Domain Park. Everybody is there—Sandy Alderson, the new general manager, his assistants, the players, the coaches, the trainers, the clubhouse manager, and even our two cooks. We go around the room and introduce ourselves. Sandy speaks first. “The expectations for this club outside of this room are very low,” he says. “I know you guys expect more of yourself, and I expect more of you too.”Sandy is not a rah-rah guy, and his approach is low-key but very compelling. “The goal of any professional sports franchise is to win, and that’s why we’re here.” When he’s done, he turns the floor over to Terry, who says, “Sandy stole my speech.” Everybody laughs. Terry has no notes. He speaks from the heart. I’ve heard a lot of these first-day speeches, and believe me, it’s more common than not for them to seem formulaic, straight off boilerplate. This is not like that at all. Terry is intense, fiery, and enthusiastic. I never get the feeling he is saying things for effect. It seems so authentic, the way he makes contact with everybody in the room and jacks up the decibel level. Even when he dabbles in clichés—“We’re going to do things the right way”—you can’t help but feel his passion and energy. Terry is a small man and doesn’t have an imposing presence when you first see him, but he is powerful nonetheless. The essence of his talk is simple: “Everybody says we’re going to stink. I hear it over and over. I think they’ve got it all wrong. You want to come along as we prove them all wrong?” Terry talks for twenty minutes or so, and by the time he is done, all I can think of is: This is a guy I’m really going to enjoy playing for. CHAPTER THREE FAITH ON WALNUT Some kids are fighters. Other kids are scrappers. I am a scrapper. I spend two extremely scrappy years—fifth and sixth grades—at St. Edward School, and the trend continues into the seventh grade at Wright Middle School, where the kids are bigger and stronger than me, but not too many have less regard for their bodies. I don’t worry about pain or getting hit or getting knocked down. I just get back up and come back at you like a boomerang. My goal when I fight is simple: I want to give more than I receive. This doesn’t make me proud. It’s just what it takes to survive, and in seventh grade survival is what I’m all about. Fights aren’t an everyday occurrence in my neighborhood, but I seem to have more than my share of them. I fight to defend myself, to right a wrong, or to settle a dispute. I’m not picky. I figure out early that in a school where smoke billows out of the bathroom and pregnant girls walk the hallways, you don’t want people thinking you are wimpy. So I learn to act tough when I need to, and sometimes when I don’t need to—which gets me into trouble. In the lunchroom one day, I get up from my seat. You have assigned seats at Wright at lunchtime, and strict rules about leaving them, the school’s effort to prevent the cafeteria from turning into WrestleMania. But I need to get a homework assignment from a classmate, so I get up and walk across the lunchroom. A monitor corrals me and says, Get back to your seat. He’s kind of nasty about it. I don’t appreciate his tone. I cuss under my breath. Not loud, not a bad cussword, but an audible obscenity, no doubt. Now he doesn’t appreciate my tone. Come with me, young man. You are going to regret your garbage mouth. He’s right—I am going to regret it—because this is Tennessee in the mid-1980s and corporal punishment still rules the day. The monitor escorts me down to see Mr. Tinnon, the assistant principal in charge of paddling. He conveniently keeps the paddle by his desk.”
“It's laughable, looking back, to see the processes I went through, pretending to make a reasoned decision. No choice is ever made on the basis of logic; the logic is fabricated around the impulse, the initial desire which is innate and incontrovertible. All the time, I knew where I was going, the elements of my fulfillment or ruin were always present; I only had to work my way into that seam of desire and find the hidden vein of dross or gold. It's not a question of predestination, it's just that free will and destiny are illusions, false opposites, consolations. In the end, they are one and the same: a single process. You choose what you choose and it could not have been otherwise: the choice is destiny. It was there all along, but any alternative you might have considered is an absurd diversion, because it is in your nature to make one choice rather than another. That is identity. To speak of freedom or destiny is absurd because it suggests there is something outside yourself, directing your life, where really it is of the essence: identity, the craftwork of the soul.”
“If you've not been loved as a child, you don't know how to love a child.”
“Ha ha, imagine Winter singing! I wonder if he can scowl and sing and look darkly handsome and mortally offended all at the same time. Probably.”
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