Category: Quotes

November Quotes: “I am the one who knocks.” – Walter White in Breaking Bad

Tucker Max’s monthly quotes post is full of gems.

A CEO’s job is to interpret external realities for a company – A. G. Lafley

Courtesy of Venkatesh Rao, whose writing will change your view of human nature and how you interpret motivation and behavior. Powerful, powerful stuff.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man. – George Bernard Shaw

Ironic.

You ok? – Butch
No, man. I’m pretty far from okay. – Wallace

A great movie reveals itself in layers. You notice beautiful new details with every viewing.

Only men need to be loved, sweetheart. Women need to be wanted. – Gemma to Nero

Yes, I streamed all 5 Sons of Anarchy seasons. As a friend told me, sometimes you want steak, and other times you just want McDonald’s.

The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist’s way of scribbling “Kilroy was here” on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass. – William Faulkner

Definition of happiness […] is the moment before you need more happiness. – Don Draper

Dr. Drew says something similar. That if you want to know happiness, look at a heroin addict.

I am not in danger, Skyler. I am the danger. A guy opens his door and gets shot and you think that of me? No. I am the one who knocks! – Walter White

I wonder why they use “of me” and not “is me”.

Tomorrow may be hell, but today was a good writing day, and on the good writing days nothing else matters. – Neil Gaiman

If you’re new to Gaiman, I recommend reading Graveyard and How To Talk To Girls At Parties.

It doesn’t matter how you get knocked down in life; that’s going to happen. All that matters is you’ve got to get up. – Ben Affleck (Oscar acceptance speech for Argo)

The best lovers do not have the best bodies. They are not the best-looking, and they do not have the largest respective body parts. What they do have is the best attitude: they are completely enthusiastic. – Lou Paget

[When Vonnegut tells his wife he’s going out to buy an envelope] Oh, she says, well, you’re not a poor man. You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet? And so I pretend not to hear her. And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals. You know, we love to move around. And, we’re not supposed to dance at all anymore. – Kurt Vonnegut

I love how Vonnegut writes. A style and voice so crisp, memorable, and yet completely unique. Good writers follow the rules. Great writers know when to break them, to beautiful effect.

My complete list of quotes is here.

September and October Quotes: “In all the noise, finding those trusted voices is more important than ever” – Tom Friedman

Aren’t quotes amazing? You get a distilled capsule of wisdom from someone (or some thing) that has withstood the test of time.

I’m constantly trying to memorize my favorites. Sometimes repetition is the only way to really learn a thing and make it a part of yourself.

I think certain types of processes don’t allow for any variation. If you have to be part of that process, all you can do is transform – or perhaps distort – yourself through that persistent repetition, and make that process a part of your own personality. – Haruki Murakami

Of course we need to start with Murakami. I’m bummed he didn’t win the Nobel Prize, but I’m sure Alice Munro deserves the prize and look forward to reading her work.

Literature is not like music; it isn’t for the young; there are no prodigies in writing. The knowledge or experience a writer seeks to transmit is social or sentimental; it takes time, it can take much of a man’s life, to process that experience, to understand what he has been through; and it takes great care and tact, then, for the nature of the experience not to be lost, not to be diluted by the wrong forms. The other man’s forms served the other man’s thoughts. – V.S. Naipaul

Been spending a lot of time with Naipaul. He is a craftsman with words and he produces work of astonishing detail and clarity. It’s like seeing a painting so intricately drawn that you feel like you’re in the uncanny valley.

Because of the intuitive way in which I have written, and also because of the baffling nature of my material, every book has come as a blessing. Every book has amazed me; up to the moment of writing I never knew it was there. But the greatest miracle for me was getting started. I feel – and the anxiety is still vivid to me – that I might easily have failed before I began. – V.S. Naipaul

He shares a frequently cited concept in his Nobel Prize speech: that he is the sum of his books, and that each new book holds all his previous books. I had a hard time with the second part, but I think it’s akin to saying that within your current self is your teenage self, your adolescent self, your child self…and so on.

I don’t buy into this happiness stuff…if you want to know happiness, look at a heroin addict. Now THEY’RE happy. – Dr. Drew

Count on Dr. Drew and Adam to call bullshit on our society’s addiction to the sort of modern self-help that offers band-aids for deep wounds.

Every really good creative person…whom I have ever known has always had two noticeable characteristics. First, there was no subject under the sun in which he could not easily get interested — from, say, Egyptian burial customs to modern art. Every facet of life had fascination for him. Second, he was an extensive browser in all sorts of fields of information. For it is with the advertising man as with the cow: no browsing, no milk. – James Young

A helpful reminder that we shouldn’t limit our pursuits – intellectual or otherwise.

We travel, initially, to lose ourselves; and we travel, next, to find ourselves. – Pico Ayer

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment – Ralph Waldo Emerson

It’s a trite statement but all trite statements are true. Because they’re obvious, we – ironically – ignore them.

In all the noise, finding those trusted voices is more important than ever – Tom Friedman

Part of a great talk promoting his new book That Used To Be Us (which I’ve bought but haven’t opened).

We’re lonely, but we’re afraid of intimacy – Sherry Turkle

Sherry has a point.

The palest ink is better than the best memory – Chinese proverb (Kinsey to Peggy)

This never happened. It’ll shock you how much it never happened – Don to Peggy

I recently watched all 5 and a half seasons of Mad Men. I’d already seen about half of the episodes, but wanted to start from the beginning and work through them in the right order and with full attention. Things made a LOT more sense the second time around, but I’m sure there will be revelations from a third viewing, or a fourth…

Compared with what we ought to be, we are only half awake. Our fires are damped, our drafts are checked. We are making use of only a small part of our possible mental resources. . .men the world over possess amounts of resource, which only exceptional individuals push to their extremes of use. – William James

A useful reminder.

Why does “touchstone” mean what it does? And other words

Raining cats and dogsI’m fascinated by the history of words and phrases that have more than just a literal meaning. Why does it “rain cats and dogs”? How did “eavesdropping” come to mean listening furtively to other peoples’ conversations? And is a touchstone an actual stone?

A touchstone, as used in casual conversation, can mean two things:

  • A way to measure the quality of something, as in “His athletic success became a touchstone for future athletes at the school”
  • An essential part of something, as in “Nirvana was a touchstone of the grunge music scene in the 1990s”

Where does the word touchstone come from?

According to that most wonderful of resources Wikipedia, a touchstone is an actual stone. More precisely, it’s a small stone tablet used to determine the quality of precious metals like gold and silver. When you use gold to draw a line on a touchstone, it leaves a streak, the color of which can be compared to streaks from gold pieces of known quality and composition.

Fascinating, right? Although explaining why it’s popular today is much harder, like trying to explain why we use “what’s up?” to greet people. Who knows, maybe some famous person decided to use it and it spread from there.

Now I’ll answer the first 2 questions with less precision.

In England several centuries ago, when it rained really hard, stray dogs and cats would drown and pile up in the gutters. Thus the phrase “it’s raining cats and dogs”. Makes you think twice about using that phrase, right?

As for eavesdropping, there are several competing explanations, but old houses used to have eaves hanging from their roofs. Thus if you were right outside the window or door, secretly listening to the conversations inside, you’d be beneath the eaves and thus eavesdropping.

What words or phrases can you explain? I’d love to hear.

August Quotes: “It’s worth noting that you can devote your life to community service and be a total schmuck. You can spend your life on Wall Street and be a hero” – David Brooks

Homer Simpson the vegetarianSee all previous ones here. Tucker Max writes a monthly quotes post which is great.

Love the way this sounds:

Poems are made by fools like me, but only God can make a tree. – Joyce Kilmer

From a favorite Brooks article:

I saw young people with deep moral yearnings. But they tended to convert moral questions into resource allocation questions; questions about how to be into questions about what to do…It’s worth noting that you can devote your life to community service and be a total schmuck. You can spend your life on Wall Street and be a hero. – David Brooks

Even other cultures, millenia ago, were thinking about habits:

Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habit. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny. – Lao Tzu

Reminds me of the rage to master:

The dirty little secret of every creative workshop or motivational seminar is simply this: The person who is going to change is going to change anyway. She has no choice. She is impelled by inner necessity. – Steven Pressfield

I don’t like when people say that something is “strictly business” or that they’re “being logical”. Your emotions are to thinking like bread is to a sandwich, without which it cannot exist.

Reason is and ought to be only a slave to the passions, and can never pretend to be any other office than to serve and obey them. – David Hume

Certainly feels true, no?

Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket – Eric Hoffer

Meditation is helping me with this:

Infinite patience gets you immediate results – James Altucher

I suck at this:

Love your enemies, for they tell you your faults – Ben Franklin

I agree with the below. Sometimes overly so?

The only path to amazing runs directly through not-so-amazing – Seth Godin

Like the old saw, “a fox knows many things but the hedgehog knows one big thing”…

Fanaticism is the only way to put an end to the doubts that constantly trouble the human soul – Paulo Coehlo

Haha:

If most of your courtship attempts have succeeded, you must be a very attractive and charming person who has been aiming too low – Geoffrey Miller

Why I stay away from email and social media in the evening:

Arguing with people is like reading your email at 4am in the morning. There is absolutely no good that can come of it. It’s just scratching an itch – James Altucher

This Hemingway guy, really something:

This too to remember. If a man writes clearly enough any one can see if he fakes. If he mystifies to avoid a straight statement, which is very different from breaking so-called rules of syntax or grammar to make an effect which can be obtained in no other way, the writer takes a longer time to be known as a fake and other writers who are afflicted by the same necessity will praise him in their own defense. True mysticism should not be confused with incompetence in writing which seeks to mystify where there is no mystery but is really only the necessity to fake to cover lack of knowledge or the inability to state clearly. Mysticism implies a mystery and there are many mysteries; but incompetence is not one of them; nor is overwritten journalism made literature by the injection of a false epic quality. Remember this too: all bad writers are in love with the epic.
-Ernest Hemingway

July Quotes: “For out of the ground we were taken for the dust we are, and to the dust we shall return.” (from The Book of Eli)

Book of Eli

Both thorn and thistles it should bring forth, for us. For out of the ground we were taken for the dust we are, and to the dust we shall return. – Denzel Washington in Book of Eli

…as Eli backs calmly into the shadows beneath a bridge, then proceeds to swiftly kill 5 brigands.

Abstinence is as easy for me as temperance would be difficult. – Samuel Johnson

Gretchen Rubin mentioned the above one at WDS. Very personally relevant – I’ll sometimes throw away food (forgive me) because keeping it around == eating it.

If I was to invent a time machine, I would come back in time and give it to myself, thereby eliminating the need to invent it in the first place. – Sheldon Cooper in Big Bang Theory

Ha ha.

If you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. – from Dave McClure’s blog

I try to be aware of my actions, but that, too, can be overkill.

Quotation is a serviceable substitute for wit. – Oscar Wilde

Given my fondness for quotes, this is very a propos.

This is how he grows: by being defeated, decisively, by constantly greater beings. – Rainer Maria Rilke

LOVE IT.

Every man, wherever he goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions, which move with him like flies on a summer day. – Bertrand Russell

Sardonic and true.

Knowing when to shut up is as important as saying the right thing – Adam Carrolla

If you don’t listen to (the old) Loveline, The Adam & Dr. Drew Show, or The Adam Carolla Show…well, you’re missing out.

What I mean is, I didn’t start running because somebody asked me to become a runner. Just like I didn’t become a novelist because someone asked me to. One day, out of the blue, I wanted to write a novel. And one day, out of the blue, I started to run – simply because I wanted to. I’ve always done whatever I felt like doing in life. People may try to stop me, and convince me I’m wrong, but I won’t change. – Haruki Murakami

“I’ve always done whatever I felt like doing in life.” That pretty much applies to me. It’s not so great, either – frequently coming at the cost of [pick one: relationships, friendships, family, happiness, peace of mind].

Basically I agree with the view that writing novels is an unhealthy type of work. When we set off to write a novel, when we use writing to create a story, like it or not a kind of toxin that lies deep down in all humanity rises to the surface. All writers have to come face-to-face with this toxin and, aware of the danger involved, discover a way to deal with it, because otherwise no creative activity in the real sense can take place. (Please excuse the strange analogy: with a fugu fish, the tastiest part is the portion near the poison – this might be something similar to what I’m getting at.) – Haruki Murakami

I’d like to write a novel. But who wouldn’t.

Be a blind samurai. – Chris Tam

My takeaway from an amazing convo with Chris…better explained in-person :)

Talent hits the target no one else can hit. Genius hits the target no one else can see. – Arthur Schopenhauer

曾经沧海难为水
Once you see the ocean, no other water can compare
除却巫山不是云
No other clouds are more impressive than those of Mountain Wu
取次花丛懒回顾
Now I walk through the flowers (other women), yet never look at any of them,
半缘修道半缘君
In part because of you, in part because of my meditations

Saw this on Quora. Don’t know every Chinese character here, yet, but even the gist is profound.

Failure is a made up thing, don’t apply meaning to failure – David DeAngelo’s 77 laws

A frequent reminder is helpful.

That’s not to say that a minuscule percentage of people don’t possess an innate, obsessive desire to improve—what psychologist Ellen Winner calls “the rage to master.” – The Talent Code

Here’s more on raging masters.

That’s it, folks. See here for a list of favorites.