The Art of Racing in the Rain

by Garth Stein

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

However, I don’t understand why people insist on pitting the concepts of evolution and creation against each other. Why can’t they see that spiritualism and science are one? That bodies evolve and souls evolve and the universe is a fluid place that marries them both in a wonderful package called a human being. What’s wrong with that idea?

Such a simple concept, yet so true: 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.

Learn to listen! I beg of you. Pretend you are a dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories. I listened that night and I heard.

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. A hero without a flaw is of no interest to an audience or to the universe, which, after all, is based on conflict and opposition, the irresistible force meeting the unmovable object.

believe that people were not so allergic to their environment until they began polluting themselves and their world with so many drugs and toxins. But then, nobody asked me.)

To live every day as if it had been stolen from death, that is how I would like to live. To feel the joy of life,

She died that night. Her last breath took her soul, I saw it in my dream. I saw her soul leave her body as she exhaled, and then she had no more needs, no more reason; she was released from her body, and, being released, she continued her journey elsewhere, high in the firmament where soul material gathers and plays out all the dreams and joys of which we temporal beings can barely conceive, all the things that are beyond our comprehension, but even so, are not beyond our attainment if we choose to attain them, and believe that we truly can.

That which is around me does not affect my mood; my mood affects that which is around me. Is it true? Could Denny have possibly appreciated the subjective nature of loneliness, which is something that exists only in the mind, not in the world, and, like a virus, is unable to survive without a willing host?

We all play by the same rules; it’s just that some people spend more time reading those rules and figuring out how to make them work in their behalf.

“There is no dishonor in losing the race,” Don said. “There is only dishonor in not racing because you are afraid to lose.”