Stuff About Things #11

"I plan it so I finish skating and work before 3 PM. This way I can spend time with my kids. With my teenage boys, I can identify with the awkwardness, being less confident than you project, and the need for belonging. When I was that age, I had support for my skating, but I didn't have anyone campaigning for my personality. So I try to instill in them that they are funny and interesting, and to be curious about the world."
     — Tony Hawk

"My Grandpa (Francis Ford Coppola) told me, 'Learn to love anxiety, because it never goes away in moviemaking.' ... (My new movie) is about the growing pains of being young - discovering who you are, realizing your parents are flawed human beings, realizing that life gets more complex, and not less, as you get older."
     — Gia Coppola"

Relax. No one else knows what they're doing either."
     — Ricky Gervais

"I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work."
     — Thomas Edison

"Ten days before he became so famous that crowds would form around any building that contained him and waiters would fight over a corncob left on his dinner plate, no one had heard of Charles Lindbergh. The New York Times had mentioned him once, in the context of the coming Atlantic flights. It had misspelled his name."
     — Bill Bryson, One Summer: America, 1927

"Luck lives in the city. Luck don’t live out here. You understand? ... Wolves don't kill unlucky deer. They kill the weak ones."
     — Cory Lambert (played by Jeremy Renner) in Wind River 

"I write every day. There's nothing like a well-structured sentence to make you feel like everything is right with the world."
     — Makenzie Leigh

It's a mystery I've never solved: What is it that drives me to perform when I can hardly hold my own at a dinner party.... (If forced to choose between rock and writing) I wouldn't hesitate, I couldn't live without writing."
     — Patti Smith

Knowledge will give you power, but character will give you respect."
     — Bruce Lee

"Laughter and Hitchens were inseparable companions, and comedy was one of the most powerful weapons in his arsenal.... (He was) the most indefatigable of allies and the most eloquent of defenders."
     — Salmon Rushdie on his friend Christopher Hitchens

"It could be argued that those who seek to make themselves over into a finer state of health and physique and fitness should not put off the job until they are in their 59th summer. As against that comes the piercing realization that, if you have actually made it this far and want to continue featuring in the great soap opera of your own existence, you had better take some swift remedial steps. It was all summed up quite neatly by whoever first said that if he'd known he was going to live this long he'd have taken better care of himself."
     — Christopher Hitchens

"Accept the seasons of your heart."
     — Kahlil Gibran

"Outer world follows inner world."
     — Peter Sage

"Let you religion be less of a theory and more of a love affair."
     — G. K. Chesterton

"Bad style doesn't discriminate. What it does do, kind of like coke-snorting and clubbing, is get much, much less cute as you age. When you're young and you dress too trendy, you look like a schmuck. When you're old and you dress too trendy, you look like an even bigger schmuck."
     — Details magazine

"I love elections. It's so much fun. It's even more fun when you're not on the ballot."
     — Barack Obama, saying so wryly

"I relish risk. Risk is extra life."
     — Jeremy Irons

"The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing."
     — Sarah Elizabeth Lewis

"If something didn't capture my attention, I was beyond useless. If it did, my focus was unbreakable.... I improved very quickly because of my ability to focus on one thing that fascinated me.... I don't live one day at a time, I live 20 minutes at a time. It drives my wife Anita crazy because I can't think of what I'm doing tomorrow."
     — David Feherty 

"There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning."
     — Louis L'Amour

"I'm always working to find the balance between the ideal and the practical, and that's why I like this advice from Steve Jobs: 'Realize that sometimes best is the enemy of better. Sometimes I go for best when I should go for better, and end up going nowhere.'"
     — Jack Dorsey

"You may not be an eternal optimist, but you're probably not a natural naysayer either. You just need to build your optimism muscles. Each week, pick one part of your life - career, relationships - and envision the next decade if all goes well. This exercise can improve your whole-life outlook, say scientists from the University of California at Riverside."
     — Men's Health magazine

"Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses your understanding."
     — Kahlil Gibran

"Without suffering, no beauty."
     — French saying