Total Recall: My Unbelievably True Life Story

What is the point of being on this Earth if you are going to be like everyone else?

There are no shortcuts—everything is reps, reps, reps.

If I can see it and believe it, then I can achieve it.

The more knowledge you have, the more you're free to rely on your instincts.

The difference between those who adapted and those who didn't, Gorton said, was a willingness to totally commit.

You'll get more from being a peacemaker than a warrior

If you want to turn a vision into reality, you have to give 100% and never stop believing in your dream.

From the bodybuilding days on, I learned that everything is reps and mileage. The more miles you ski, the better a skier you become; the more reps you do, the better your body.

If you don’t believe in yourself, then how will anyone else believe in you?

Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell, and advertise.

Never follow the crowd, go where it's empty

I didn't mind basic training. It taught me that something that seems impossible at the start can be achieved.

it's not what you get out of life that counts. Break your mirrors! In our society that is so self-absorbed, begin to look less at yourself and more at each other. you'll get more satisfaction from having improved your neighborhood, your town, your state, your country, and your fellow human beings than you'll ever get from your muscles, your figure, your automobile, your house, or your credit rating

I love it when people say that something can’t be done. That’s when I really get motivated; I like to prove them wrong.

Forget plan B. To test yourself and grow, you have to operate without a safety net.

I never felt that I was good enough, strong enough, smart enough. He let me know that there was always room for improvement. A lot of sons would have been crippled by his demands, but instead the discipline rubbed off on me. I turned it into drive.

have a vision, trust yourself, break some rules, ignore the naysayers, don’t be afraid to fail.

I’m a big believer in hard work, grinding it out, and not stopping until it’s done,

My definition of living is to have excitement always; that’s the difference between living and existing.

Don’t go where it’s crowded. Go where it’s empty. Even though it’s harder to get there, that’s where you belong and where there’s less competition.

You have to build the ultimate physical machine, but also the ultimate mind

To be successful, however, you must be brutal with yourself and focus on the flaws.

I always believed in shooting for the top, and to become an American is like becoming a member of the winning team.

The years with Barbara taught me a great lesson: how having a good relationship can enrich your life.

Everything has style, everything`s a little bit larger than life and done with mischief

Being busy helping customers meant that I had no time to train the way I was used to, with an intense four-or five-hour workout each day. So I adopted the idea of training twice a day, two hours before work and two hours from seven to nine in the evening, when business slacked off and only the serious lifters were left. Split workouts seemed like an annoyance at first, but I realized I was onto something when I saw the results: I was concentrating better and recovering faster while grinding out longer and harder sets. On many days I would add a third training session at lunchtime. I'd isolate a body part that I thought was weak and give it thirty or forty minutes of my full attention, blasting twenty sets of calf raises, say, or one hundred triceps extensions. I did the same thing some nights after dinner, coming back to train for an hour at eleven o'clock. As I went to sleep in my snug little room, I'd often feel one or another muscle that I'd traumatized that day jumping and twitching-just a side effect of a successful workout and every pleasing, because I knew those fibers would now recover and grow.

I’d closed my ears to my friends’ horror stories about married life. “Ha! Now you get to argue about who should change the diapers.” Or “What kind of food makes a woman stop giving blow jobs? Wedding cake!” Or “Oh boy, wait until she hits menopause.” I paid no attention to any of that. “Just let me stumble into it,” I told them. “I don’t want to be forewarned.

Now all of a sudden there was joy, there was struggle, there was pain, there was happiness, there were pleasures, there were women, there was drama. Everything made it feel like “now we are really living!