191 pages
Rating: (11.9K votes)
“It had that kind of open-ended fear to it - like that feeling you get when you're driving and you see a cop. And you're not speeding. You don't have drugs. But you're just thinking, I hope he doesn't notice I'm driving.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“When you're in a relationship with someone who's selfish, what keeps you in it is the fact that when they shine on you, it's this souped-up shine. And you feel like you're in the club. And you don't even know what club it is. You just know you want to stay in it.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“Bears are simultaneously so graceful and so strong. Bears know who they are, but they often don’t know who you are, which is why they kill you.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“The list of fun and easily fixed brain diseases is very short.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“I'm a big fan of pastries the size of a baby that contain enough calories for a year. That seems like an effective use of time.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“I was a big dreamer and never particularly good at anything--a real dilemma. I wasn't terrible. I was just... okay. If you're terrible, you can write everybody off, like, "I don't know what the hell those idiots are doing?" I knew what those idiots were doing. And I knew that they did it better than me.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“Sometimes, when you want to be in a place so badly, you'll do anything.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“I try to think up material that might apply to the subjects they are studying. How many mitochondria does it take to power a cell? One. Because mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell. Not ready for prime time, that one.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“I wake up at 4:30 am to jump on a plane, which is that part of the morning before the earth even exists. Before they've even programmed the Matrix. You walk out of your apartment and the road isn't even there. You walk out of your house, and there's just a guy with a laptop who yells, "We need a road, stat!" "How 'bout a building, Tank!”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“So I’m standing in a tree thirty feet above the pond with my three friends and my friend Pat says, “Dude, jump!” And I look down at the water, which is so far away, and I say, “That doesn’t seem like a good plan.” And they said, “Dude, we already jumped, it’s no biggie. What’s the worst thing that could happen? It’s only watah” (that’s “water” with a Boston accent), which is really flawed logic, that watah logic. I learn later that many bad things historically have happened in water. Shark attacks. Drowning. Bad sex. But my friend Nick makes an argument that in Massachusetts is irrefutable. He’s like, “Do it.” So I do.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“I thought, Hey, maybe these people shouldn’t be making up holidays to drink more. Maybe if they drank less they might be able to title their newspaper articles more specifically. For example, I would title this last article “Drunk Driver Hits Drunk Walker Drunkety-Drunk I’m So Drunk.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“It was my first brush with live performance. And delusion. •”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“They really cut to the chase in the urologist’s examination room, and I tried to laugh. If this office were a movie, it would have been rated R.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“Growing up, I was discouraged from telling personal stories. My dad often used the phrase “Don’t tell anyone.” But not about creepy things. I don’t want to lead you down the wrong path. It would be about insignificant things. Like I wouldn’t make the soccer team and my father would say, “Don’t tell anyone.” And I would say, “They’re gonna know when they show up to the games and I’m not on the team and I’m crying.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“Looking back on it, could there possible have been a more confusing acronym for trying to keep kids from experimenting with drugs than DARE?
"Kids, we’re here today to DARE you not to do drugs! We DARE you to accept our DARE!"
"Office, does that mean you want us not to do drugs, or to do drugs?"
“We DARE you not to do drugs!”
"But I thought we weren’t supposed to do things We’re dared to do. If you dared me to jump out of a tree, I should do that, right?"
"It’s just an acronym, son."
"What is an acronym?”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“This is my situation. I'm the kind of person who, for fun, writes articles called 'Aviation Club Soars into Orbit!' and an unhappy bully I've never heard of is sending out envoys.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“I was made to believe that my life was going to be fixed and it wasn't. I'm still the same loser who had flown to Los Angeles on my sister's frequent flier miles just six days before.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“also put up with it because I couldn’t believe how lucky I was just to be with her. When you’re in a relationship with someone who’s selfish, what keeps you in it is the fact that when they shine on you, it’s this souped-up shine. And you feel like you’re in the club. And you don’t even know what club it is. You just know you want to stay in it.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“High school is not unlike a Mormon fundamentalist cult where the women are claimed by the older and more powerful.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“I check my phone messages and email about forty-five times a day. I don’t even know what I’m expecting to get in these messages. Maybe Visa will call and say, “We just realized that we owe you money!” or I’ll get an email from a high school classmate that says, “We’ve reconsidered and we’ve decided you were cool after all.” Whatever”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“If you’re terrible, you can write everybody off, like, “I don’t know what the hell those idiots are doing?” I knew what those idiots were doing. And I knew that they did it better than me. In”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“That one’s yours and that one’s mine.” Like we’re cars. And I don’t feel like I’ve ever been one of the good cars. No one’s ever seen me and said, “I get that one!” They’re more like, “I get that one? Um, okay.” Or even, “I get that one? You owe me.” It’s so sad to think that people are incurring debt based on my appearance. I’d hate to hurt someone’s credit score. So”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“Growing up, I was a big fan of the Indiana Jones movies. I watched them again recently and found them to be misleading. Aspiring archeologists across the world probably show up to their first day of work with their weather-worn fedoras and their whips and they’re like, “Where’s the cavern of jewels?” And their boss is like, “Actually, today we’re gonna start off by dusting thousands of miles of nothing.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“Well, I’m not sure what happened next, but I ended up peeing on Mrs. Jarvis’s lawn.”
― quote from Sleepwalk With Me and Other Painfully True Stories
“Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connection with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general. And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befall himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own. To prevent, therefore, this paltry misfortune to himself, would a man of humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, provided he had never seen them? Human nature startles with horror at the thought, and the world, in its greatest depravity and corruption, never produced such a villain as could be capable of entertaining it. But what makes this difference? When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble? When we are always so much more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves, than by whatever concerns other men; what is it which prompts the generous, upon all occasions, and the mean upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others? It is not the soft power of humanity, it is not that feeble spark of benevolence which Nature has lighted up in the human heart, that is thus capable of counteracting the strongest impulses of self-love. It is a stronger power, a more forcible motive, which exerts itself upon such occasions. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct.”
― Adam Smith, quote from The Theory of Moral Sentiments
“In the lean approach, companies are taught that prices are set by the market and that one way to improve profit margin is to reduce costs. This thinking flies in the face of "cost plus" thinking, where we look first at our own costs and set prices based on our desired profit margin. The reality is that most companies whether manufacturers or hospitals, do not have market power to set prices as they wish.”
― Mark Graban, quote from Lean Hospitals: Improving Quality, Patient Safety, and Employee Satisfaction
“Love is a negative form of hatred.”
― Roger Zelazny, quote from This Immortal
“Every creature has a survival instinct. It looks like fear but it’s not the same thing. Fear isn’t the desire to avoid death or pain. Fear is rooted in the knowledge that what you recognize as yourself can cease to exist. Fear is existential.”
― John Scalzi, quote from The Ghost Brigades
“كيف يستطيع الإنسان أن يكون أقوى ؟ كيف يستطيع أن يقلل من عبوديته للظروف ؟”
― Colin Wilson, quote from The Outsider
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