“You don't love someone because they're a dream of perfection. You love them because of the way they meet their challenges, how they struggle to overcome. You love them because together, you bring out the best in each other.””
“It was when he tried to talk about 'the boat' that his words began to falter and tears welled up in his eyes...Finally, watching Joe struggle for composure over and over, I realized that 'the boat' was something more than just the shell or its crew. To Joe, it encompassed but transcended both - it was something mysterious and almost beyond definition. It was a shared experience - a singular thing that had unfolded in a golden sliver of time long gone, when nine good-hearted young men strove together, pulled together as one, gave everything they had for one another, bound together forever by pride and respect and love. Joe was crying, at least in part, for the loss of that vanished moment but much more, I think, for the sheer beauty of it.””
“In a desperate attempt to stay young forever we have achieved eternal childishness, rather than eternal youth.””
“Yes, I’m Daniel Tahi." I know what your lips taste like.I know you roll your eyes when you think someone is an idiot. I know that you wish you were six inches shorter because you hate being taller than most of the boys you've ever met. Your name is tattooed across my chest and written on my heart.You are a fire daughter of earth, fanua afi and I am vasa loloa,son of the ocean. I am yours...And you can’t even remember who I am.””
“She walks a tightrope between psycho and smokin'.””
Thomas Daniel Young was an influential American academic known for his significant contributions to the field of English literature. He served as the first Gertrude C. Vanderbilt Professor of English ...
“Guess what? The Nazis didn't lose the war after all. They won it and flourished. They took over the world and wiped out every last Jew, every last Gypsy, black, East Indian, and American Indian. Then, when they were finished with that, they wiped out the Russians and the Poles and the Bohemians and the Moravians and the Bulgarians and the Serbians and the Croatians--all the Slavs. Then they started in on the Polynesians and the Koreans and the Chinese and the Japanese--all the peoples of Asia. This took a long, long time, but when it was all over, everyone in the world was one hundred percent Aryan, and they were all very, very happy. Naturally the textbooks used in the schools no longer mentioned any race but the Aryan or any language but German or any religion but Hitlerism or any political system but National Socialism. There would have been no point. After a few generations of that, no one could have put anything different into the textbooks even if they'd wanted to, because they didn't know anything different. But one day, two young students were conversing at the University of New Heidelberg in Tokyo. Both were handsome in the usual Aryan way, but one of them looked vaguely worried and unhappy. That was Kurt. His friend said, "What's wrong, Kurt? Why are you always moping around like this?" Kurt said, "I'll tell you, Hans. There is something that's troubling me--and troubling me deeply." His friend asked what it was. "It's this," Kurt said. "I cannot shake the crazy feeling that there is some small thing that we're being lied to about." And that's how the paper ended.' Ishmael nodded thoughtfully. 'And what did your teacher think of that?' 'He wanted to know if I had the same crazy feeling as Kurt. When I said I did, he wanted to know what I thought we were being lied to about. I said, 'How could I know? I'm no better off than Kurt.””
“I don’t think I’ve ever referred to any girl I dated as my girlfriend. I think that would freak me out. Even the girl that I dated for two years in college I don’t think I ever referred to her as my girlfriend.”“How would you introduce her?” I asked.“I’m just going to say her name,” he said.””
“In terms of development, very young children are right-hemisphere dominant, especially during their first three years. They haven’t mastered the ability to use logic and words to express their feelings, and they live their lives completely in the moment”
“Look, girls know when they’re cute,” he said. “You don’t have to tell them. All they need to do is look in the mirror. I have one friend out in New York, an attorney. She moved out there after the school year to take the bar. She doesn’t have a job. I was like, ‘How are you going to get a job there in this market?’ And she’s like, ‘I’ll wink and I’ll smile.’ She’s a pretty girl. Whether that works despite her poor grades is yet to be seen.””