Colin Rowe Quotes

You were thinking about how suburbs are perfect cradles for dreaming: they practically beg you to imagine another life, one lived at a burning voltage. The dreaming hidden in this place - murmuring beneath the comfort of the uniform gardens in their perfect rows, the mowed lawns, each driveway that bit too small for the two large cars you couldn't have become what you are if you hadn't always been from this.

Ah, so you’re scared.” “I’m not scared.” “Of course you are. You’re human. We’re all scared, every last one of us. Afraid of life, of love, of dying. Maybe marching in neat rows all day distracts you from the truth of it. But when the sun goes down? We’re all just stumbling through the darkness, trying to outlast another night.” Colin downed another swig of wine, then stared at the bottle. “Excellent vintage. Makes me sound almost intelligent.

Crossing my arms over my chest, I said, a little too heartily, “So this is the library.” There certainly couldn’t be any doubt on that score; never had a room so resembled popular preconception. The walls were paneled in rich, dark wood, although the finish had worn off the edges in spots, where books had scraped against the wood in passing one too many times. A whimsical iron staircase curved to the balcony, the steps narrowing into pie-shaped wedges that promised a broken neck to the unwary. I tilted my head back, dizzied by the sheer number of books, row upon row, more than the most devoted bibliophile could hope to consume in a lifetime of reading. In one corner, a pile of crumbling paperbacks—James Bond, I noticed, squinting sideways, in splashy seventies covers—struck a slightly incongruous note. I spotted a moldering pile of Country Life cheek by jowl with a complete set of Trevelyan’s History of England in the original Victorian bindings. The air was rich with the smell of decaying paper and old leather bindings. Downstairs, where I stood with Colin, the shelves made way for four tall windows, two to the east and two to the north, all hung with rich red draperies checked with blue, in the obverse of the red-flecked blue carpet. On the west wall, the bookshelves surrendered pride of place to a massive fireplace, topped with a carved hood to make Ivanhoe proud, and large enough to roast a serf. In short, the library was a Gothic fantasy.

There’s no such thing as villains,” Colin says. “Just a whole bunch of people who are the heroes of their own fucked-up stories.

Are you kidding me? I’d love to write with you, Fish. Hell yeah.” Fish is beaming. “Cool. I’ve got some lyrics, too. Some weird shit I wanna bounce off you.” “Awesome. And just so you know, you’re a sick-ass bass player, Fish Head. Always have been. I wouldn’t want anyone else standing there with me every night.” “Word,” Colin says. “Same with you, Colinoscopy. You’re a sick-ass drummer beast, and I couldn’t do what I do without you, either.” Colin and Fish are both clearly moved. And so am I. On impulse, we all step into a huddle and put our hands in. We make stupid goat noises, ever so briefly, but they don’t make us laugh as usual. This time, they make our Adam’s apples bob.

Until you have your ducks in a row, hold off on hiring a bunch of salespeople. First, hire an expert to help you build a solid playbook, figure out what kind of people you want to hire, set up your daily huddle, and figure out who your customers are. That’s really what it looks like to transform into a sales-driven culture, where it’s everyone’s job to think about how to make sales more effective, from the receptionist taking a message to the software programmer in charge of the Content Management System. As companies grow, it’s easy for them to become more siloed and disconnected from other departments, but a salesdriven culture reaffirms the principle that the company exists to solve a problem, to connect customers to the solution for their problem, and to close that deal.

Years earlier, I had told him how doing this had impacted my own college career. I was so proud that he had listened to me, as this one small decision can have a major impact on his life. And it literally costs him nothing to choose to sit in the front row. By choosing to do so, though, he has helped set himself up for success in life because it will force him to pay closer attention and engage more with the professor compared to hiding in a seat at the back. In addition, he surrounds himself with all the other keeners who eventually become his study partners and friends.

You were thinking about how suburbs are perfect cradles for dreaming: they practically beg you to imagine another life, one lived at a burning voltage. The dreaming hidden in this place — murmuring beneath the comfort of the uniform gardens in their perfect rows, the mowed lawns, each driveway that bit too small for the two large cars — you couldn't have become what you are if you hadn't always been from this.

But I’m no dark and smoldering Casanova, like Colin—a guy everyone says looks like a tattooed version of that cartoon smolderfest from Tangled.