The author's mentor advises the NAKED method of breaking the ice at the first meeting: Name, Address, Kin, Experience, and Dreams.
Unlike most other children, - especially unlike those of today - who are eager to become men and women as speedily as possible, I had a terror of growing up, which became more and more accentuated as I grew older.
You live and then you die, I thought. It's good to have some good times.
Soccer isn't the same as Bach or Buddhism. But it is often more deeply felt than religion, and just as much a part of the community's fabric, a repository of traditions.
I think when you become a parent you go from being a star in the movie of your own life to the supporting player in the movie of someone else's.
I found the prospect daunting, but somehow comforting, too, because the counselors insisted it could be done, and, after all, many of them were recovering alcoholics themselves.
She still cared for me, and the best way I could make amends to her was to be happy. I do have a knack for finding great women.
From this moment on I'd dedicate my life to rock and roll and take as many drugs as possible. What could possibly go wrong?
In math, the backwards E, ∃, means there exists. ∈ means part of a set. A line through that ∉ means excluded from. Everyone ∃, but not everyone ∈. We all feel that, unless we ∈, we do not ∃.
Whether I or anyone else accepted the concept of alcoholism as a disease didn't matter; what mattered was that when treated as a disease, those who suffered from it were most likely to recover.
It is possible to cause seemingly biochemical changes through human emotional involvement. You literally have changed his chemistry by being his friend.
.. a friend is someone who inspires, who challenges, who sends you in search of some truer sense of yourself..
Sometimes our dreams are affirmed in the most unlikely ways by the most unlikely people. That’s why we need to speak our commitment out loud.
...People would make the decisions they wished to make and some of them would hurt both themselves and those who loved them, and some would pass unnoticed, while others would bring joy.
When the author admits to Christians that he was not a Christian himself, he says their dialogue became "distant and rehearsed, like a pitch for Ginsu knives.
Christian pop culture can be worthwhile if done well, but bad Christian pop culture isn't redeemed merely by the fact that it's Christian.
Human beings, you see, do absolutely two primary things. We see like and unlike. Like becomes, in literature, simile and metaphor. Unlike becomes uniqueness and difference, from which I believe, the novel is born.
In a sprint, if you don't have perfect form, you're doomed. The ultra distance forgives injury, fatigue, bad form, and illness. A bear with determination will defeat a dreamy gazelle every time.
Every day I ran to that book like it was a bottle of whiskey and crawled inside because it was a world that I had at least some control over, and slowly, in time, it began to take shape.
But sometimes we are not drawn to that which is different from what we know and fear. Sometimes we are drawn to that which is exactly the same.
Philippine culture was clearly different. It wasn't the fan's duty to remain aloof in the presence of stars; it was the player's responsibility to show gratitude to the average Filipino.
