When I'm done skating, I guarantee you that I will not look back and remember standing on the podium. I'm going to remember these days - being with the team. Training alone, in my basement. Training when everybody else is sleeping. Doing things that ...
'Envy the Night' was my first stand alone, the first book I'd written in the third person and I loved the feel of that, and it was different but it was also the same. 'So Cold the River,' I knew, was going to be really different, and that's why I tho...
Every time you get into a new job, new location, you have an amazing opportunity in front of you. You get to play dumb for as long as people will allow you to play dumb. You get to ask all the dumb questions, you get to ask multiple people the dumb q...
I failed to get into drama school, and my best friend told me I should do stand-up instead. I was always doing gags and voices, so he booked a gig for me without telling me. I only had four days to write it. I did a seven-minute set; the first four m...
In my early 20s I was so miserable doing construction, I wanted something that paid money. I liked nice stuff. I liked cars and architecture, and things that cost money. I wanted to not swing a hammer, and make money... and not do stuff that was dirt...
I grew up in what you might call a relentlessly creative household. We were given art supplies, music supplies... Our mother knew enough to get us started and then stand back and not meddle. My parents never said to us, 'Don't you think you'll need s...
What crushed my soul was hanging out with bitter, desperate comics backstage. They're a different breed than the bitter yet eager psyches in the wings of an improv theatre. Struggling stand-ups have externalized self-loathing into an art form. They'r...
As a child I had been taught to say my prayers at the start of every day, and so it did not seem an odd thing for me to stand out in the field and say "Oh God whatever happens today let it be under your perfect control.
Politicians study hard and work diligently their entire lives to be able to stand in front of a national audience and lie through their teeth.
Only those who have tasted the bitterest of the bitter can become people who stand out among others. -Guanchang Xianxing Ji
Awareness is everything. Hallie once pointed out to me that people worry a lot more about the eternity *after* their deaths than the eternity that happened before they were born. But it's the same amount of infinity, rolling out in all directions fro...
This book is to be neither an accusation nor a confession, and least of all an adventure, for death is not an adventure to those who stand face to face with it. It will try simply to tell of a generation of men who, even though they may have escaped ...
All you need, you think, is a breather, a few minutes standing up at the bar like in the old days, having a harmless bottle of beer. Only the bottle of beer isn't harmless; it's a trigger. It sets off that crazy thing in your mind that made you a dip...
It seems impossible to wheedle his way out of his impending death. No one has before him. But just as a young person feels invincible, he cannot bring himself to accept the looming train as he stands upon the tracks feeling the deep rumbling of the b...
One who cannot leave himself behind on the threshold of the moment and forget the past, who cannot stand on a single point, like a goddess of victory, without fear or giddiness, will never know what happiness is; and, worse still, will never do anyth...
Men are tested and tried amongst deceptions radically and they are winning for themselves abilities to give, to deliberate, to stand fast, to choose well, to discriminate.” “They are far from the 'automata' of the Universe some think them to be. ...
Some one has defined a work of art as a “thing beautifully done.” I like it better if we cut away the adverb and preserve the word “done,” and let it stand alone in its fullest meaning. Things are not done beautifully. The beauty is an integr...
The good news is that you don’t have to remove absolutely every single barrier that stands between you and your SoulMate. You just have to remove enough of them.
She pauses several treads from the bottom, listening, waiting; she is again possessed (it seems to be getting worse) by a dream-like feeling, as if she is standing in the wings, about to go onstage and perform in a play for which she is not appropria...
You must learn to tell worry from thought and thought from prayer. Sometimes a light will go from your life, and a thought becomes a prayer til you are strong enough to stand under the weight of your own thought again.
I had a dream about you. You owned a taco stand, and I looked like a pile of meat, cheese, lettuce, sour cream, and hot sauce. I resented you, and you wanted to enslave me.
