The Art of Racing in the Rain

by Garth Stein

People and their rituals. They cling to things so hard sometimes.

“Very gently. Like there are eggshells on your pedals,” Denny always says, “and you don’t want to break them. That’s how you drive in the rain.”

Because memory is time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present.

that which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.

Suppressing the symptom does nothing but force the true problem to express itself on a deeper level at some other time. Go

It makes one realize that the physicality of our world is a boundary to us only if our will is weak; a true champion can accomplish things that a normal person would think impossible.

This is very David Goggins-esque. I support it in some ways in a certain context - however (and an extremely loud and insistent qualifier) - this is simplified too drastically. A will alone will not defeat certain realities. Furthermore, what is a normal person? This entire statement is so problematic.

People, like dogs, love repetition. Chasing a ball, lapping a course in a race car, sliding down a slide. Because as much as each incident is similar, so it is different.

So much of language is unspoken. So much of language is comprised of looks and gestures and sounds that are not words. People are ignorant of the vast complexity of their own communication.

I marveled at them both; how difficult it must be to be a person. To constantly subvert your desires. To worry about doing the right thing, rather than doing what is most expedient.

The true hero is flawed. The true test of a champion is not whether he can triumph, but whether he can overcome obstacles—preferably of his own making—in order to triumph.

That which is around me does not affect my mood; my mood affects that which is around me.

Many of us have convinced ourselves that compromise is necessary to achieve our goals, that all of our goals are not attainable so we should eliminate the extraneous, prioritize our desires, and accept less than the moon.

He died that day because his body had served its purpose. His soul had done what it came to do, learned what it came to learn, and then was free to leave.