240 pages
Rating: (3.3K votes)
“I knew God gave me these dreams. How could I give up on them?”
― quote from Running for My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games
“The thing about dreams, though, is they usually sound crazy to everyone but you. All it takes is one other person to buy into them to keep you going.”
― quote from Running for My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games
“War is always far worse on the poor than the rich. Always.”
― quote from Running for My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games
“I looked up at the giant Jumbotron television screen. There on the screen I saw President Bush, standing, saluting the flag. They then split the image in half. On one side was the president, his hand over his heart. On the other side was me, Lopez Lomong, the lost boy carrying the flag of his new home. I am no longer a lost boy or an orphan. The flag in my hand is my identity; it is who I am now and who I never was before.”
― quote from Running for My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games
“The thing about dreams, though, is they usually sound crazy to everyone but you.”
― quote from Running for My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games
“I walked down the track, beaming with pride. God had brought me so far, through war, through eating garbage and running to forget about my empty stomach. No matter what I went through, God was always with me. He had always had this moment planned for me through both the good times and the bad, from the killing fields of Sudan to these Olympic Games and back again.”
― quote from Running for My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games
“I do not know how we could run so far and so fast and so long. We did not run with our own strength but with strength from God. That is the only explanation. The”
― quote from Running for My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games
“I learned lots of things those first few weeks. First and foremost, I learned what it meant to be a refugee. From the moment I stepped into Kakuma, I became a boy without a country. A refugee camp is a kind of no-man’s-land. No one lives there by choice. You end up in places like Kakuma when you have no better option. Everyone who lived there just wanted to go home.”
― quote from Running for My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games
“Watching people run on television was a revelation for me. Never before had I thought of running as a sport. When I ran, I did not think about conditions in the camp or the hunger in my belly. Running was my therapy, my release, my escape from the world around me.”
― quote from Running for My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games
“There was another casualty of the September 11 attacks that very few people knew about at the time. In the wake of the attacks, the United States halted the program that brought me and many other lost boys to America. Heightened concerns over security left officials wary that terrorists might sneak into the country posing as lost boys.”
― quote from Running for My Life: One Lost Boy's Journey from the Killing Fields of Sudan to the Olympic Games
“I came to get you. I knew you'd freak out."
"But..." My head still feels like a helium balloon. "Why?"
Nick looks blank. "Because you always freak out."
I shake my head. My voice feels like I've swallowed it. "I mean, why do you care if I freak out?"
There's a long silence.
"Well," Wilbur finally bursts, "I can take a shot in the dark, if you want."
"Seriously," Nick snaps, making his fingers into a gun shape. "I'm going to take a shot in the dark in a minute and it will make contact."
Wilbur looks charmed. "Isn't he adorable?" he says fondly. "My duty as Fairy Godmother is complete, anyhoo, and I believe it's time to spread my magic dust elsewhere. So many pumpkins after all; so little time.”
― Holly Smale, quote from Geek Girl
“we believe our problems are the greatest and our misfortunes the worst, there is always someone out there who has suffered more.”
― Devdutt Pattanaik, quote from Jaya: An Illustrated Retelling of the Mahabharata
“Because here’s the thing that’s wrong with all of the “How to Be Happy” shit that’s been shared eight million times on Facebook in the past few years—here’s what nobody realizes about all of this crap: The desire for more positive experience is itself a negative experience. And, paradoxically, the acceptance of one’s negative experience is itself a positive experience. This is a total mind-fuck. So I’ll give you a minute to unpretzel your brain and maybe read that again: Wanting positive experience is a negative experience; accepting negative experience is a positive experience. It’s what the philosopher Alan Watts used to refer to as “the backwards law”—the idea that the more you pursue feeling better all the time, the less satisfied you become, as pursuing something only reinforces the fact that you lack it in the first place. The”
― Mark Manson, quote from The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck: A Counterintuitive Approach to Living a Good Life
“Everyone crossed themselves at the mention of the IRS. Street gangs and the mob paled in comparison to fear of the tax code.”
― Janet Evanovich, quote from Ten Big Ones
“You cannot argue stupidity, you just have to accept it patiently as one of those things.”
― Nevil Shute, quote from Round the Bend
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