billfrist’s most recent Quotables

"Everybody, everybody everywhere, has his own movie going, his own scenario, and everybody is acting his movie out like mad, only most people don’t know that is what they’re trapped by, their little script.

Follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly.

I had no interests. I had no idea how I was going to escape. At least the others had some taste for life. They seemed to understand something that I didn’t understand. Maybe I was lacking. It was possible. I often felt inferior. I just wanted to get away from them. But there was no place to go.

She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite them so that they don't apply to you.

Some damage is too severe, some harm endures. And what you have to do is accept it. And by accept it I mean, don’t be the paralyzed person in the bed who is waiting to walk again. Realize, it’s never gonna happen. And find some other way to get around –swing from a vine, get a Mad Max wheelchair. Anything but…wait.

Aiming to succeed wildly and being fulfilled by failing really well.

We are whiplashed between an arrogant overestimation of ourselves and a servile underestimation of ourselves.

The best time to start was last year. Failing that, today will do.

There’s nothing the matter with his mind. He just does things in his own way and in his own time.

Don't let anyone ever say to you that you shouldn't regret anything...don't do that. Don't.
You regret what you want...use that.
Use that regret for anything, any way you want.

Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative. An animal so poor in spirit that he won't even fight on his own behalf is already an evolutionary dead end; the best he can do for his breed is to crawl off and die, and not pass on his defective genes.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.

Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The slogan "press on" has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.

You can't very well reason with someone when their whole argument is that logic doesn't count.

The disappearance of a sense of responsibility is the most far-reaching consequence of submission to authority.

I don't mind people being sick, but I don't accept them being stupid.

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle.

This is my letter to the world
That never wrote to me.

There is no psychiatrist in the world like a puppy licking your face.

The average dog is a nicer person than the average person.