Ned > Ned's Quotes

“You told me once that a soul isn't something a person is born with but something that must be built, by effort and error, study and love. And you did that with more dedication than most, that work of building a soul-not for your own benefit but for the benefit of those that knew you.”
― Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding

“But baseball was different. Schwartz thought of it as Homeric - not a scrum but a series of isolated contests. Batter versus pitcher, fielder versus ball. You couldn't storm around, snorting and slapping people, the way Schwartz did while playing football.You stood and waited and tried to still your mind. When your moment came, you had to be ready, because if you fucked up, everyone would know whose fault it was. What other sport not only kept a stat as cruel as the error but posted it on the scoreboard for everyone to see?”
― Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding

“For Schwartz this formed the paradox at the heart of baseball, or football, or any other sport. You loved it because you considered it an art: an apparently pointless affair, undertaken by people with special aptitude, which sidestepped attempts to paraphrase its value yet somehow seemed to communicate something true or even crucial about The Human Condition. The Human Condition being, basically, that we're alive and have access to beauty, can even erratically create it, but will someday be dead and will not.

Baseball was an art, but to excel at it you had to become a machine. It didn't matter how beautifully you performed SOMETIMES, what you did on your best day, how many spectacular plays you made. You weren't a painter or a writer--you didn't work in private and discard your mistakes, and it wasn't just your masterpieces that counted.”
― Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding

“It was strange the way he loved her; a side long and almost casual love, as if loving her were simply a matter of course, too natural to mention”
― Chad Harbach, The Art of Fielding

“If there's a single lesson that life teaches us, it's that wishing doesn't make it so.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“I got my heart's desire, and there my troubles began.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“[F]or just one second, look at your life and see how perfect it is. Stop looking for the next secret door that is going to lead you to your real life. Stop waiting. This is it: there's nothing else. It's here, and you'd better decide to enjoy it or you're going to be miserable wherever you go, for the rest of your life, forever.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“Are you kidding? That guy was a mystery wrapped in an enigma and crudely stapled to a ticking fucking time bomb. He was either going to hit somebody or start a blog.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“The life I should be living had been mislaid through some clerical error by the cosmic bureaucracy.”
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians

“Our fathers had bequeathed us nothing but memories. A fire had stripped me of all tangible tokens, save my little hat; Alistair Warthrop had taken most of what had belonged to Pellinore. What remained of them was simply us, and when we departed, so would they. We were the tablets upon which their lives were writ.”
― Rick Yancey, The Monstrumologist

“A miscalculation is not negligence, nor prudence a crime. I am a scientist. I base my action or inaction upon probability and evidence. There is a reason we call science a discipline! Inferior minds bolt or build pyres to roast the witches in their midst!”
― Rick Yancey, The Monstrumologist

“Perhaps that is our doom, our human curse, to never really know one another. We erect edifices in our minds about the flimsy framework of word and deed, mere totems of the true person, who, like the gods to whom the temples were built, remains hidden. We understand our own construct; we know our own theory; we love our own fabrication. Still . . . does the artifice of our affection make our love any less real?”
― Rick Yancey, The Monstrumologist

“There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other that heat comes from the furnace.”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac

“Our ability to perceive quality in nature begins, as in art, with the pretty. It expands through successive stages of the beautiful to values as yet uncaptured by language.”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

“Civilization has so cluttered this elemental man-earth relationship with gadgets and middlemen that awareness of it is growing dim. We fancy that industry supports us, forgetting what supports industry.”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
― Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There

“Every age fraught with discord and danger seems to spawn a leader meant only for that age, a political giant whose absence, in retrospect, seems inconceivable when the history of that age is written.”
― Dan Simmons, The Fall of Hyperion

“In the end--when all else is dust--loyalty to those we love is all we can carry with us to the grave. Faith--true faith--was trusting in that love.”
― Dan Simmons, The Fall of Hyperion

“But, Dad…” She hesitated. “It will mean raising me all over again. It means suffering through my childhood for a third time. No parent should be asked to do that.”

Sol managed a smile. “No parent would refuse that, Rachel.”
― Dan Simmons, The Fall of Hyperion

“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown”
― H.P. Lovecraft, Supernatural Horror in Literature

“The saddest aspect of life right now is that science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom.”
― Isaac Asimov

“Whoever I was before is no one I ever got to know.”
― Karen Joy Fowler, We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“Even T. S. Eliot’s famous 1915 poem The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock—in which he laments the need to “prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet”—seems a cri de coeur about the new demands of self-presentation.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“how did we go from Character to Personality without realizing that we had sacrificed something meaningful along the way?”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“The “Bus to Abilene” anecdote reveals our tendency to follow those who initiate action—any action. We are similarly inclined to empower dynamic speakers.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“Grant says it makes sense that introverts are uniquely good at leading initiative-takers. Because of their inclination to listen to others and lack of interest in dominating social situations, introverts are more likely to hear and implement suggestions. Having benefited from the talents of their followers, they are then likely to motivate them to be even more proactive. Introverted leaders create a virtuous circle of proactivity, in other words. In the T-shirt-folding study, the team members reported perceiving the introverted leaders as more open and receptive to their ideas, which motivated them to work harder and to fold more shirts.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“The book of Exodus is short on explication, but its stories suggest that introversion plays yin to the yang of extroversion; that the medium is not always the message; and that people followed Moses because his words were thoughtful, not because he spoke them well.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“If this is true—if solitude is an important key to creativity—then we might all want to develop a taste for it. We’d want to teach our kids to work independently.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“the key to exceptional achievement. When you practice deliberately, you identify the tasks or knowledge that are just out of your reach, strive to upgrade your performance, monitor your progress, and revise accordingly. Practice sessions that fall short of this standard are not only less useful—they’re counterproductive. They reinforce existing cognitive mechanisms instead of improving them.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

“The way forward, I’m suggesting, is not to stop collaborating face-to-face, but to refine the way we do it. For one thing, we should actively seek out symbiotic introvert-extrovert relationships, in which leadership and other tasks are divided according to people’s natural strengths and temperaments. The most effective teams are composed of a healthy mix of introverts and extroverts, studies show, and so are many leadership structures.”
― Susan Cain, Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking