King of the Mild Frontier Quotes

“As a child abuse and neglect therapist I do battle daily with Christians enamored of the Old Testament phrase "Spare the rod and spoil the child." No matter how far I stretch my imagination, it does not stretch far enough to include the image of a cool dude like Jesus taking a rod to a kid.”
― Chris Crutcher, King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography – The Riveting, Laugh-Out-Loud Funny Young Adult Coming-of-Age Memoir

“It's easy to look back and say if things had been perfect, I could have accommodated all of those things into my life. But as a therapist I do not allow that word to be uttered in my office after the first session, because I believe the only reason for the existence of that word is to make us feel bad. It's the only word in the language (that I know of) that is defined in common usage by what can't be. It sets a vague standard that can't be met because it is never truly characterized. I prefer to think that we're all out here doing our best under the circumstances, looking at our world through the only eyes through which we can look at it: our own.”
― Chris Crutcher, King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography – The Riveting, Laugh-Out-Loud Funny Young Adult Coming-of-Age Memoir

“There is no Jesus without Judas, no Martin Luther King, Jr., without the Klan; no Ali without Joe Frazier; no freedom without tyranny. No wisdom exists that does not include perspective. Relativity is the greatest gift.”
― Chris Crutcher, King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography – The Riveting, Laugh-Out-Loud Funny Young Adult Coming-of-Age Memoir

“I know the answer to the question now, by the way: why bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. It came from my inner editor, the part of me that forces the wordy writer in me to dump ninety percent of all modifiers: Ask both questions again, minus the adjectives.
"Why do things happen to people?"
Just because.”
― Chris Crutcher, King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography – The Riveting, Laugh-Out-Loud Funny Young Adult Coming-of-Age Memoir

“Does anyone in this room have it?"
"No, Chris, no one here has it."
"How do you know?"
"Because the mark was dark skin. Negroes are the descendants of Cain."
I didn't have my civil-rights sensibilities yet, but I was starting to get a bad feeling about God....”
― Chris Crutcher, King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography – The Riveting, Laugh-Out-Loud Funny Young Adult Coming-of-Age Memoir

“Since then I have searched for my heroes among small-t truths. I always find them among people learning the art of acceptance: not acceptance of defeat or acceptance of some inability to influence their own futures, but rather acceptance of life on the planet, acceptance of the grays rather than the black-and-whites, acceptance of the astonishing range of human emotion and human behavior.”
― Chris Crutcher, King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography – The Riveting, Laugh-Out-Loud Funny Young Adult Coming-of-Age Memoir

“I believe there was a big bang and that because of that we are all connected into infinity, and I know very little having to do with human beings that doesn't also have to do with connection.”
― Chris Crutcher, King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography – The Riveting, Laugh-Out-Loud Funny Young Adult Coming-of-Age Memoir

“Viruses have no morality, no sense of good and evil, the deserving or the undeserving.... AIDS is not the swift sword with which the Lord punishes the evil practitioners of male homosexuality and intravenous drug use. It is simply an opportunistic virus that does what it has to do to stay alive.”
― Chris Crutcher, King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography – The Riveting, Laugh-Out-Loud Funny Young Adult Coming-of-Age Memoir

“Leave me alone, you big fat shitburger!”
― Chris Crutcher, King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography – The Riveting, Laugh-Out-Loud Funny Young Adult Coming-of-Age Memoir

“A student asked me recently why somebody always dies in my books. I said, because somebody is always dying in my life.”
― Chris Crutcher, King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography – The Riveting, Laugh-Out-Loud Funny Young Adult Coming-of-Age Memoir

“A sport has its own built-in integrity, doesn't need an artificial one. Athletics carries its own set of truths, and those truths are diminished and manipulated by people with agendas.”
― Chris Crutcher, King of the Mild Frontier: An Ill-Advised Autobiography – The Riveting, Laugh-Out-Loud Funny Young Adult Coming-of-Age Memoir