Robin > Robin's Quotes

“Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music - the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.”
― Henry Miller

“Being mortal is about the struggle to cope with the constraints of our biology, with the limits set by genes and cells and flesh and bone. Medical science has given us remarkable power to push against these limits, and the potential value of this power was a central reason I became a doctor. But again and again, I have seen the damage we in medicine do when we fail to acknowledge that such power is finite and always will be. We’ve been wrong about what our job is in medicine. We think our job is to ensure health and survival. But really it is larger than that. It is to enable well-being. And well-being is about the reasons one wishes to be alive. Those reasons matter not just at the end of life, or when debility comes, but all along the way. Whenever serious sickness or injury strikes and your body or mind breaks down, the vital questions are the same: What is your understanding of the situation and its potential outcomes? What are your fears and what are your hopes? What are the trade-offs you are willing to make and not willing to make? And what is the course of action that best serves this understanding?”
― Atul Gawande, Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“If you love something, let it go.
If you don't love something, definitely let it go.
Basically, just drop everything, who cares.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“...slow and steady wins the race, till truth and talent claim their place.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“I was sad that summer was over. But I was happy that it was over for my enemies, too.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“I think it's better to not know certain things. It gives the world an extra bit of mystery, which is important to us as human beings.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“It's not always enough to be brave, I realized years later. You have to be brave and contribute something positive, too. Brave on its own is just a party trick.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“If people are well paid for reality television and cotton candy and dunking a basketball, why can't they be well paid for changing young minds?”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“Love always won in the end. No matter how it happened, no matter what it took, no matter what it meant. Fair or not, true or not, love won.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“All eyes are beautiful, I said, which is why it’s such an easy compliment.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“There’s always going to be one more thing. Because that’s what infinite feels like. And the difference between love and everything else is that it’s infinite, it’s built out of something infinite, or it feels like it is, anyway, which is the same thing to us.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“You have infinite time here, and there are infinite things to do, but you still don’t end up doing much of it. You do what you love most, over and over.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“Do you think why not is ultimately a better question than why? Why or why not?”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“I can’t even handle love, there’s no way I can handle it being taken away. I won’t survive it. Please. Please. Please!”

I said that I had something to say to her, which made her listen in a way that she didn’t when I simply said things without the preface. Even though the preface meant nothing, it calmed her, just as it calmed real people, for the same no-reason.

I told her what people tell people. That this was what it felt like when love was taken away—but that it wasn’t the truth, it was just a feeling. It would pass. It would take time.
She would recharge.

She didn’t believe me.

No one ever believes it, I said. That’s part of what the feeling is.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“But nobody remembers how long anything takes; they only remember how good it was in the end.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“You think a million billion more things will come your way, a million billion more versions of everything. But no, everything that actually causes that infinite feeling, the circumstances of every infinite feeling, is so, so finite.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“I opened up a bit and explained that I have a type I'm drawn to naturally, but that I've found that the women I've ended up loving the most have never been what I've thought of as my type, maybe because part of love is being helpless, being out of control of your own emotions.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“eople—even good, impressive people—always want something simple and unimpressive. Everything good and impressive that they do in their lives is a result of the impressive path they take to get what they want—not a result of wanting an impressive thing.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“He kissed her for an eternity, which was fine, because heaven had eternities to burn. Then he kissed her for another.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“Didn't they realize how much interesting shit there was to see and do in this world if you just woke up at a normal fucking time like a normal fucking person?”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“You meet a finite number of people in your life. It feels to you like it's infinite, but it's not. I think it's the biggest thing I can see that you can't.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“why do u always post pics of ur food!?

He did it because it made him feel like he was eating his meals with more people.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“We talked for four hours. I don't remember most of it, but often a little moment in an unrelated conversation or alone on the street will trigger a memory of it I didn't know I had. So I know it's all there somewhere.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“It feels like the world is made of music, and you are the world.”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“YO SOY SAUCE! CÓMPRAME!”
― B.J. Novak, One More Thing: Stories and Other Stories

“More girls were killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men killed in all the wars in the 20th century. More girls are killed in this routine gendercide in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century.

The equivalent of 5 jumbo jets worth of women die in labor each day... life time risk of maternal death is 1,000x higher in a poor country than in the west. That should be an international scandal.”
― Nicholas D. Kristof, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“Decades from now, people will look back and wonder how societies could have acquiesced in a sex slave trade in the twenty-first century that is... bigger than the transatlantic slave trade was in the nineteenth. They will be perplexed that we shrugged as a lack of investment in maternal health caused half a million women to perish in childbirth each year.”
― Sheryl WuDunn, Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide

“As I watched Patti perform I took a mental picture of the moment. I looked around and thought about my life. I felt grateful. I noticed every detail. That is the key to time travel. You can only move if you are actually in the moment. You have to be where you are to get where you need to go.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please

“People help you time travel. People work around you and next to you, and the universe waits for the perfect time to whisper in your ear, "look this way!" There is someone in your life right now who may end up being your enemy, or your wife, or your boss. Lift up your head and you may notice... You can only move if you actually in the moment. You have to be where you are to get where you need to go.”
― Amy Poehler, Yes Please