Fargo Quotes

Your friends will believe in your potential, your enemies will make you live up to it.

Who you are tomorrow begins with what you do today.

It's so trendy, almost bleeding to death. All the cool girls are doing it.

Ya called Fargo yet?” “No, I’ve been too busy trying to destroy the Guild and corrupt Simon’s soul. Being evil is a full-time job.

He slowed down a bit more. "Gaia, how do you know these things?" She shrugged. "I'm smart." "And modest, too." "Modesty is a waste of time," she pronounced. "I'll keep that in mind.

Confidence is what we get when we take fear, face it and replace it.

Opportunity doesn't make appointments, you have to be ready when it arrives.

Imagine being down so bad you’d master a whole Olympic sport to spend time with someone.

There are lots of different kinds of love. Love like a steady, warming campfire that keeps you alive in the cold. Love like a raging blaze that burns down everything in its path until nothing but ash remains.

His love for me hadn't been motivation enough to reach his full potential. His hatred, though? That made him capable of anything.

Good advice is not often served in our favorite flavor.

The thing is, when pushing your limits is all you know, when it seems normal to you...it's hard to remember you even have limits. Until you run right into them.

Don't envy what people have, emulate what they did to have it.

Some people take offense like it's a limited time offer.

Those not chasing their dreams should stay out of the way of those who are.

Don't underestimate the power of being underestimated.

We used to joke that they were going to die in each other's arms or kill each other with their bare hands. Nothing in between.

Happiness grows best in the soil of contentment.

When there is silence, Give your voice. When there is darkness, Shine your light. When there is desperation, Offer hope.

Want to go really fast? Slow down and focus.

Time is a thief. It steals our memory, our hopes, and our strength, leaving only the sense there’s never enough of it.

If you want a new tomorrow, then make new choices today.

Starting a new way is never easy so...keep starting until the start sticks.

But little do they know: killing a man is so much more satisfying than fucking a man could ever be.

When a woman smacks a man in the face? She usually has a damn good reason.

Intelligence is knowing the right answer. Wisdom is knowing when to say it.

Compromise is a sign you'll pass on the road to mediocrity.

Mistakes should be examined, learned from, and discarded; not dwelled upon and stored.

People tell you that you cannot, because they do not.

You're next, motherfucker.

Let's face it: Sadness and evil are always more believable than happiness and love. When a movie reviewer calls a film "realistic," everyone knows what that means--it means the movie has an unhappy ending.

Education is every day and everywhere, the only thing you have to pay is attention.

Chemistry is great, but eventually your relationship moves out of the laboratory.

He wasn’t afraid of me. That was his first mistake.’ 

I became a skater because I wanted to feel like that. Fierce. Confident. A warrior goddess covered in glitter. So sure of myself, I could make my dreams come true through sheer force of will.

If you want to have the time of your life, change how you use the time in your life.

Life’s a daring adventure or nothing at all.

Though neither of them had ever called their meeting a case of love at first sight, they'd both agreed it had certainly been a case of "pretty damned sure at first hour.

Never forget the value of time. You can acquire much in life. By comparison, time is fixed. Use it wisely.

Don't tell me about your effort. Show me your results.

Even in his final moments, I doubt he learned his lesson. But I didn’t kill him to teach him a lesson; I killed him to carve him out of this world like a tumor. And I’d do it again.

What my mom failed to understand was that I didn't even want long hair -- I needed long hair. And my desire for protracted, flowing locks had virtually nothing to do with fashion, nor was it a form of protest against the constructions of mainstream society. My motivation was far more philosophical. I wanted to rock.

Ignore failure. Try anew until you succeed.

Doing something wrong repeatedly does not make it right.

Don't exercise your freedom of speech until you have exercised your freedom of thought.

Happiness couldn’t be won. It couldn’t be hung around our necks while a crowd of thousands cheered. It wasn’t a prize, something we had to suffer and toil to earn. If we wanted happiness, we had to create it ourselves. Not in one shining moment on a medal stand, but every single day, over and over again.

Forgiveness is the process of dropping off your emotional baggage.

Leadership is service, not position.

The path to wisdom is paved with humility.

You can always be better. But don't let that stop you from carrying yourself like a champion. If you don't believe you're the best, no one else will either.

Never give up your right to be wrong, and be sure to give others that right too.

Progress and motion are not synonymous.

I may not have an Olympic gold medal, but I have something better: a life where I spend every day with my favorite people in the world, doing exactly what I love. If that's not winning, I don't know what is.

I tried to abandon my tenacity, but I just couldn't let it go.

You don't get any points in life for doing things the hard way.

We need people who push boundaries rather than retreat inside them.

It might sound chauvinistic, but there is a sad reality in rock music: Bands who depend on support from females inevitably crash and burn.

It’s exhausting, being in my head. I wish I could stop thinking. I wish I could be like everyone else.

Reading was my most reliable escape in childhood, the one way I could get away from my father while still trapped in the same space with him.

They wanted a grand, epic love story. They wanted raw, rip-your-clothes-off passion. They didn’t simply want us to be lovers—they wanted us to be so in love, we’d burn the whole world down to be together. 

Winter denial: therein lay the key to California Schadenfreude--the secret joy that the rest of the country feels at the misfortune of California. The country said: "Look at them, with their fitness and their tans, their beaches and their movie stars, their Silicon Valley and silicone breasts, their orange bridge and their palm trees. God, I hate those smug, sunshiny bastards!" Because if you're up to your navel in a snowdrift in Ohio, nothing warms your heart like the sight of California on fire. If you're shoveling silt out of your basement in the Fargo flood zone, nothing brightens your day like watching a Malibu mansion tumbling down a cliff into the sea. And if a tornado just peppered the land around your Oklahoma town with random trailer trash and redneck nuggets, then you can find a quantum of solace in the fact that the earth actually opened up in the San Fernando Valley and swallowed a whole caravan of commuting SUVs.

The road to success is longer than you'd like, but shorter than you imagine.

When your ideas shatter established thought, expect blowback.

How you try is more important than how hard you try.

Forget seizing the moment. Seize the opportunity.

Good intentions might sound nice, but it's positive actions that matter.

If you want to improve your self-worth, stop giving other people the calculator.

It is never wise to run any race but your own.

Don't waste today by talking about yesterday until it's finally tomorrow.

There's never just one cockroach in the kitchen.

All the cutest girls are bi, didn’t you get the memo?

His face darkens with a mixture of embarrassment and anger- perhaps the most dangerous combination in a man.

While like most men, Sam prided himself on being equipped with a supernatural internal compass that kept him from ever being lost, he'd also learned to concede those rare times when that compass seemed to be temporary disrepair.

Heath had a bottomless pit inside him too, but it had nothing to do with ambition. No matter how much love I gave him, it would never be enough. He wanted to be everything to me, the way I was everything to him. And I would always want more.

When someone says you can't, look at where they are sitting. Perhaps they meant they can't.

The world we see is a painting colored by our fears and desires.

I never drank from the fountain of knowledge, I had mine on the rocks.

I hated them. I wanted to be them. I couldn't take my eyes off them.

I'd convinced myself if I became the best, it didn't matter who I hurt, because in the end, it would be worth it. Even if I hurt myself most of all.

He calls us to run hard after Him, His commands, and His glory. The decision to be in God's will is not the choice between Memphis or Fargo or engineering or art; it's the daily decision we face to seek God's kingdom or ours, submit to His lordship or not, live according to His rules or our own.

What you choose today will determine who you are tomorrow.

If we spark a student's passion, we unleash a powerful force upon the world.

Dangerous things, books." "Look what it did to your brain.

A pretty face always comes with an attitude

I enjoy hating musicians far more than I enjoy appreciating them. As far as I'm concerned, when someone becomes a rock star, he quits being a person.

Decide that life is good and you are special. Decide to enjoy today. Decide that you will live life to the fullest now, no matter what. Trust that you will change what needs changing, but also decide that you're not going to put off enjoying life just because you don't have everything you want now. Steadfastly refuse to let anything steal your joy. Choose to be happy...and you will be.

Leaders don't need a path. They make one.

The greatest risk is not taking any.

No controversy, no PR.

I’m not an object or an obstacle to him anymore. I’m his goddamn ruination.

I sometimes wonder how many hours of my life I have wasted bitching about keyboards. The use of keyboards and synthesizers is the Roe v. Wade of '80s metal. It was-without question-the lamest instrument a band could use.

I love your personality," I said with wide eyes and an open smile. I had used this look before when a bank teller at Wells Fargo had threatened to put a ten-day hold on a check from my father because my average balance was $3.56.

Punk was perfect for lazy people, because anyone could do it--you didn't even need to know how to play your instrument, assuming you knew how to plug it in. There was really no difference between Sid Vicious and anyone in London who owned a bass.

The problem isn't a shortage of opportunities; it's a lack of perspective.

Perhaps success is best defined as maximizing the ratio of your rear wheel horsepower to your engine horsepower. Higher %, happier times.

Too many decisions are made based on satisfying ego.

Booze is the greatest of all equalizers. Rich drunks and poor drunks both pass out the same way.

Let's dispel a little myth. Working hard is NOT the key to success. It may be an ingredient, but it isn't the main one.

According to Google statistics, people search the word "money" four times as often as the word "goal". This creates a word: "frustration".

Compromise is a sign you'll pass on your way to mediocrity.

I was not supposed to end up freezing my ass off in a remake of Harry Potter meets The Italian Job by way of Fargo.

I WOKE the next morning with a silly smile on my face. Like Donna Fargo, I was the "Happiest Girl in the Whole U.S.A." even though I was still "Sleeping Single in a Double Bed.

If I told what I knew about his relationship with Oswald, he might spend the rest of his career freezing his ass off in Fargo.

The human eye can detect more shades of green than any other species." ~ Lorne Malvo - Fargo, Season 1

What music "means" is almost completely dependent on the people who sell it and the people who buy it, not the people who make it. Our greatest artists are the ones who understand how they can be interesting and unique within those limitations.

Interview: “Do you consider yourself a role model?” the interviewer asks? “As the first Chinese-American woman to win the Olympic gold in ice dance, you-“ Sheiks interrupts. “I think you mean the first American woman.

I have so many more men to kill.

Success is like sausage, you'd be surprised what goes into it.

There's no point in being committed to a vision if you're not equally committed to making it a reality.

His abuse was all emotional and psychological; the only marks it left were internal. Impossible to see, easy to deny.

Soon, I told myself, staring into the shadows beyond my bedroom window, Heath and I would be free of this place. And no matter what, we would be together.

He enjoyed winning, but he didn't feel the same gnawing ache of ambition, the bottomless pit inside me that got exactly what it wanted and then demanded more, more, more

He wasn’t afraid of me. That was his first mistake.

Life is as you yourself make it.

If men like that could learn the error of their ways, I wouldn’t have to teach so many of them a lesson.

Who’s smiling now, motherfucker?

The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it." - Michelangelo

At a trade show, someone said, "You'll get in trouble for that." I replied,"Are they going to call the trade show police?

The greatest risk is not taking one.

To give value to others, you have to begin by valuing yourself.

No days off. No breaks. No excuses. Some days, I thought I might not make it through. But every day, I felt happier than ever before in my life.

I didn't invent misogyny, I just shamelessly profited from it.

You can always be better. But don’t let that stop you from carrying yourself like a champion. If you don’t believe you’re the best, no one else will either. You understand?

Imagine being so down bad you’d master a whole Olympic sport to spend time with someone.

Both lyrically and sonically, glam metal is the sensible accompaniment for removing one's pants for money.

By now, I’ve heard it all: Katarina Shaw is a bitch, a diva, a sore loser, a manipulative liar. Cold-blooded, a cheater, a criminal. An attention whore, an actual whore.

It’s me, I’m the one, and I did it all to protect women like us. I did it, and I’d do it again.

His face darkens with a mixture of embarrassment and anger—perhaps the most dangerous combination of emotions in a man.

Men like him don’t want a relationship, they want a fan club. The more members the better.

The corridor narrowed to a fine point far ahead, seeming to stretch to infinity, or maybe just to Fargo. Will wasn't sure which was worse.

Heath, please. We’ve made it this far. This is our dream, our—” “No, Katarina.” He sighed and slipped his hand into mine. “It’s your dream.

Heath hesitated. I watched the warring desires skirmish on his face. A part of him longed to surrender to my curiosity; another part wanted to keep defending the barriers he'd built up to protect himself. I couldn't force him. I couldn't rush him. He had to be the one to tear down the walls, brick by brick - and whenever he was ready, I'd be waiting on the other side.

I return to the bookcases, pulling down as many volumes as I can carry and dropping them on top of Kinnear, until he’s covered head to toe with the words of the dead white men he loved so dearly.

It's not enough to do something well, you have to make some noise about it, and to really be appreciated you have to be ready to show people just what it is you do and what it is about how you do it that makes you so special.

During the 1970s (and particularly because of Vietnam), it slowly became standard for absolutely everyone to go to college, particularly if they had no desire to get a real job. One of the results was a massive population of film school students, most of whom became waiters and valets in the 1980s. Since the vast majority of these Kubrick wannabes couldn't crack the motion picture industry, they saw opportunities to make minimovies in the world of rock 'n' roll.

But it’s not long before the panic creeps in again. My throat tightening, my heart throbbing with the suspicion that happiness must be a trick, a trap, a rug about to be pulled out from under me, and any second now I’m going to fall.

Seemingly unperturbed by the lack of a beneficial owner’s name on such a large transfer—a glaring red flag—Wells Fargo let it through, just a tiny drop in the pool of trillions of dollars that U.S. correspondent banks process every day.

You know what’s really fucked-up?” she says. “I used to wish he would hit me.” I’d had this same thought about my father. His abuse was all emotional and psychological; the only marks it left were internal. Impossible to see, easy to deny.

In a federal lawsuit, Baltimore officials charged Wells Fargo with targeting black neighborhoods for so-called ghetto loans. The bank’s “emerging markets” unit, according to a former bank loan officer, Beth Jacobson, focused on black churches.

When I was strong and self-assured, people recoiled from me. They told me I was too competitive, too ambitious, too much. But when I was brought low, bruised and bleeding, a princess in need of rescue instead of a conquering queen, they loved me.

Yeah, like this one carny up in Fargo. It had a big sign saying 'See the Siamese twins,' and everybody pays a buck, thinking they're gonna see two people hooked together. And when they get there it's a cage with two Siamese kittens in it. Like that.

New Rule: Republicans must stop pitting the American people against the government. Last week, we heard a speech from Republican leader Bobby Jindal--and he began it with the story that every immigrant tells about going to an American grocery store for the first time and being overwhelmed with the "endless variety on the shelves." And this was just a 7-Eleven--wait till he sees a Safeway. The thing is, that "endless variety"exists only because Americans pay taxes to a government, which maintains roads, irrigates fields, oversees the electrical grid, and everything else that enables the modern American supermarket to carry forty-seven varieties of frozen breakfast pastry.Of course, it's easy to tear government down--Ronald Reagan used to say the nine most terrifying words in the Englishlanguage were "I'm from the government and I'm here to help." But that was before "I'm Sarah Palin, now show me the launch codes."The stimulus package was attacked as typical "tax and spend"--like repairing bridges is left-wing stuff. "There the liberals go again, always wanting to get across the river." Folks, the people are the government--the first responders who put out fires--that's your government. The ranger who shoos pedophiles out of the park restroom, the postman who delivers your porn.How stupid is it when people say, "That's all we need: the federal government telling Detroit how to make cars or Wells Fargo how to run a bank. You want them to look like the post office?"You mean the place that takes a note that's in my hand in L.A. on Monday and gives it to my sister in New Jersey on Wednesday, for 44 cents? Let me be the first to say, I would be thrilled if America's health-care system was anywhere near as functional as the post office.Truth is, recent years have made me much more wary of government stepping aside and letting unregulated private enterprise run things it plainly is too greedy to trust with. Like Wall Street. Like rebuilding Iraq.Like the way Republicans always frame the health-care debate by saying, "Health-care decisions should be made by doctors and patients, not government bureaucrats," leaving out the fact that health-care decisions aren't made by doctors, patients, or bureaucrats; they're made by insurance companies. Which are a lot like hospital gowns--chances are your gas isn't covered.

In every office I’ve worked, word of complimentary cake races through the ranks of the cubicle class like it’s a rumor about the Wells Fargo wagon showing up in River City, Iowa. Free break room cake is a blessing, a gift from some benevolent force that asks nothing of you in return. Free break room cake offers you an opportunity to share a portion of some other person’s joy, both literally and figuratively. In a space built on capitalist power structures, free break room cake reminds you that you don’t need to produce anything to be deserving of a little sweetness.

They [dolphins] are my least favorite member of the animal kingdom. Everyone seems to think dolphins are cute and "intelligent," but they're best described as ugly and impractical. I don't want to come across as insensitive, but show me a person whose intelligence equates to that of a dolphin and I will show you a fucking retard.

I imagined leaning across the table and kissing him. The kind of bold action I liked to write for my characters, because I could never take it myself.

You've read about it in books, but reading about something isn't the same as experiencing it.

People respond well to managers who stop being bosses and start being leaders.

People respond well to managers who stop being bosses and start being leaders. They go the extra mile if they genuinely believe that your success is their success and vice versa.

Unless you cross the bridge of your insecurities, you can't begin to explore your possibilites

Great experiences are built on a foundation of bad experiences.

I know I shouldn’t take it out on him—he’s not the enemy here—but it felt good, letting a little bit of the rage break through. Like spitting out poison.

Men like them are the ones who really get away with murder.

We were sixteen, and so sure of everything.

I know you're the only pistol champion we have, but I'd rather they no see enough of you to hit. You're also the only wife I have..." "You're so sweet.' "...at the moment.

A man does not run among thorns for no reason; either he is chasing a snake or a snake is chasing him.

Katarina Shaw was in the building, and that bitch had come to win.

Gossip is a powerful tool that the marginalized can wield against the establishment. Sometimes the only tool we have.

Trying to get away from me, because she's afraid. Afraid of me. I feel so alert, blood thrumming, muscles coiled, like her fear is feeding me.

Imagine being down so bad you'd master an Olympic sport to spend time with someone

Everyone thinks Heath Rocha was my first love. He wasn't. My first love was figure skating.

Destroying these beautiful books sparks more guilt in me than any of the murders I’ve committed, but at least they’re serving a purpose.

That’s not pity in his eyes, or judgment. Instead, it’s something like… wonder. Maybe admiration, even.

The top eight coal power financiers were Citigroup, Barclays, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Royal Bank, Wells Fargo, and Morgan Stanley. In 2016, JPMorgan Chase, while paying lip service to the Paris climate accord, poured $6.9 billion into the dirtiest fossil fuels on earth, and was top banker on Wall Street in tar sands oil, Arctic oil, ultra-deep water oil, coal power, and LNG

I wish I could answer your question. All I can say is that all of us, humans, witches, bears, are engaged in a war already, although not all of us know it. Whether you find danger on Svalbard or whether you fly off unharmed, you are a recruit, under arms, a soldier." "Well, that seems kinda precipitate. Seems to me a man should have a choice whether to take up arms or not." "We have no more choice in that than in whether or not to be born." "Oh, I like choice, though," he said. "I like choosing the jobs I take and the places I go and the food I eat and the companions I sit and yarn with. Don't you wish for a choice once in a while ?" She considered, and then said, "Perhaps we don't mean the same thing by choice, Mr. Scoresby. Witches own nothing, so we're not interested in preserving value or making profits, and as for the choice between one thing and another, when you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again. We have different needs. You have to repair your balloon and keep it in good condition, and that takes time and trouble, I see that; but for us to fly, all we have to do is tear off a branch of cloud-pine; any will do, and there are plenty more. We don't feel cold, so we need no warm clothes. We have no means of exchange apart from mutual aid. If a witch needs something, another witch will give it to her. If there is a war to be fought, we don't consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not it is right to fight. Nor do we have any notion of honor, as bears do, for instance. An insult to a bear is a deadly thing. To us... inconceivable. How could you insult a witch? What would it matter if you did?" "Well, I'm kinda with you on that. Sticks and stones, I'll break yer bones, but names ain't worth a quarrel. But ma'am, you see my dilemma, I hope. I'm a simple aeronaut, and I'd like to end my days in comfort. Buy a little farm, a few head of cattle, some horses...Nothing grand, you notice. No palace or slaves or heaps of gold. Just the evening wind over the sage, and a ceegar, and a glass of bourbon whiskey. Now the trouble is, that costs money. So I do my flying in exchange for cash, and after every job I send some gold back to the Wells Fargo Bank, and when I've got enough, ma'am, I'm gonna sell this balloon and book me a passage on a steamer to Port Galveston, and I'll never leave the ground again." "There's another difference between us, Mr. Scoresby. A witch would no sooner give up flying than give up breathing. To fly is to be perfectly ourselves." "I see that, ma'am, and I envy you; but I ain't got your sources of satisfaction. Flying is just a job to me, and I'm just a technician. I might as well be adjusting valves in a gas engine or wiring up anbaric circuits. But I chose it, you see. It was my own free choice. Which is why I find this notion of a war I ain't been told nothing about kinda troubling." "lorek Byrnison's quarrel with his king is part of it too," said the witch. "This child is destined to play a part in that." "You speak of destiny," he said, "as if it was fixed. And I ain't sure I like that any more than a war I'm enlisted in without knowing about it. Where's my free will, if you please? And this child seems to me to have more free will than anyone I ever met. Are you telling me that she's just some kind of clockwork toy wound up and set going on a course she can't change?" "We are all subject to the fates. But we must all act as if we are not, or die of despair. There is a curious prophecy about this child: she is destined to bring about the end of destiny. But she must do so without knowing what she is doing, as if it were her nature and not her destiny to do it. If she's told what she must do, it will all fail; death will sweep through all the worlds; it will be the triumph of despair, forever. The universes will all become nothing more than interlocking machines, blind and empty of thought, feeling, life...

I don’t know how to do this: make friends, talk to girls, talk to anyone my age really. In high school, kids only acknowledged my existence if they wanted something, like help studying for their AP English final.

Francesca had grown up watching me, like I'd grown up watching Sheila. She said I was inspiring, but what had I inspired? There was no joy left in her, no light. Those smiles were a mask, concealing a molten core of grasping ambition. I wanted to shake her by the shoulders and tell her it wasn't too late. She could wake up. She could realize there was more to life than winning. Happiness couldn't be won. It couldn't be hung around our necks while a crowd of thousands cheered. It wasn't a prize, something we had to suffer and toil to earn. If we wanted happiness, we had to create it ourselves. Not in one shining moment on a medal stand, but every single day, over and over again. I could have told Francesca all that, but it wouldn't have mattered. She'd have to learn for herself, like I did.

Zaten kırılmış bir kızsın şimdi dövülmüş bir av Yanmış ırmaklar öneriyorsun toy bedenine Kavmin yanlış tufanlardan geçip duruyor Gözlerime baka baka ağlayıp aşk diyorsun Bir tekkenin ortasına sirk treni devriliyor Ki hâlâ çocuk övmeye duruyorsam bu Şehrin en uzak yerinden gelen onunla Ve Izmitle ve Fargo yla ve Horasan la Ve Hafıs ın beni eve götürdüğü kınla ılgili bir matkabı Girdiği çenemden kemiğiyle birlikte söküp Şu karşıki düğün salonuna ilave edemememdendir Yoksa orospular ve ortaokul öğretmenleri girmesinler diye Babam ve bilhassa dedem Mahallemize yeterince toplum polisi gönderilmemesi konusunda Gerekli telefonları etmiş durumdadırlar sevgilim! Ama yine de sırf sen sürdürülebil diye aynı alnında melekçe Ve şüpheye düşmeden kelebek besleyebilsin diye bir padişah açıkça Benim alıp kını Öte yana geçmem gerektir Içinden memleketi çekeyim diye Hem düşünsene; Bu bizi nasıl da imparatorluklaştırır! Yoo,hayır! Omzunu açma,.omzun ideoloji taşır. Ve fakat 'dil'e rağmen bütün bunlar sevgilim Ayaklarına beyaz çoraplar giydirmek istemediğim anlamına gelmeyebilir !!!!

why I hate Wells Fargo and Bank of America. These big banks are pieces of shit. They rip you off, charge near-extortionate fees, and use deceptive practices to beat down the average consumer. Nobody will speak up against them because everyone in the financial world wants to strike a deal with them. I have zero interest in deals with these banks. If you use them, don’t. You’re asking to be mistreated if you do. Google “Ramit best accounts” for the best checking and savings accounts and credit cards. I make no money from these recommendations. I just want you to avoid getting ripped off.

My regimented food preparation was just one aspect of the environment I created in Fargo—where I was in control of everything as I saw fit. When I left Minneapolis, I was fleeing a family and culture that prescribed so many aspects of my life that I didn’t know where they ended and I began. Away from the confines of their judgments, I wanted to explore the full range of my reactions—to new people, new books, new music, new ideas. In North Dakota I found a space where for the first time in my life I was able to push all of the expectations away from my brain and focus only on what interested me.

Focusing on one outcome to the detriment of all else. Like we saw in the Wells Fargo story, focusing on one metric at the cost of all else can quickly derail a team and company. In addition to your primary outcome, a team needs to monitor health metrics to ensure they aren’t causing detrimental effects elsewhere. For example, customer-acquisition goals are often paired with customer-satisfaction metrics to ensure that we aren’t acquiring unhappy customers. To be clear, this doesn’t mean one team is focused on both acquisition and satisfaction at the same time. It means their goal is to increase acquisition without negatively impacting satisfaction.

As always, behind the flow of money necessary for such mergers and acquisitions were the banks. Once there were hundreds of banks in America, owned by individuals and local families. But due to government regulations put into place during the Reagan-Bush years, these banks either faded away or consolidated. In 1990, there were thirty-seven major banks in the U.S. By 2009, buy-outs, mergers, and bankruptcies had reduced this number to four. Those left standing were Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Wells Fargo, according to the General Accounting Office. Ominously, in June 2012, the giant global rating agency Moody’s downgraded the ratings of Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, and JP Morgan, citing concerns for the stability of the world’s financial system.

the Big Three own, which include America’s major airlines (American, Delta, United Continental), much of Wall Street (JPMorgan Chase, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citigroup) and car makers such as Ford and General Motors. Together, the Big Three are the largest single shareholder in almost 90 per cent of firms listed in the New York Stock Exchange, including Apple, Microsoft, ExxonMobil, General Electric and Coca-Cola. As for the dollar value of the Big Three’s shares, it has too many zeros to mean much. At the time of writing, BlackRock manages nearly $10 trillion in investments, Vanguard $8 trillion and State Street $4 trillion. To make sense of these numbers: they are almost exactly the same as the US national income; or the sum of the national incomes of China and Japan; or the sum of the total income of the eurozone, the UK, Australia, Canada and Switzerland.

More often, I’d meet people like Brett Favre. Not literally like Brett Favre, in the sense that they were forty-year-old football players, but that they were people who loved Wisconsin but couldn’t find a way to make it work there, took off for NewYork, crashed and burned, and then found a home for themselves here in the City of Lakes. Minneapolis is where the drama queens and burnouts and weirdos and misfits of the rural and suburban Upper Midwest wind up. It’s a city full of people who, though they’d never say it, secretly suspect they don’t belong here, that they’re not Minneapolis enough, because they didn’t go to a city high school, or because they didn’t hang out at First Avenue when they were teenagers, or because they came from the suburbs, or from outstate.They came from the Iron Range or Fargo–Moorhead or Bloomington or White Bear Lake or Collegeville, or from Chicago or California or the Pacific Northwest or Mexico or Somalia. Wherever they came from, Minneapolis is their home now, and it belongs to them. It belongs to us.

Heath knew me when I was a gangly little girl with bloody kneecaps and prairie grass in my hair. He'd seen me sobbing and weak and shaking with helpless rage. He knew my pressure points. He knew how to provoke me. Garrett had never known me as Kat Shaw from Nowhere, Illinois. I could leave her behind, as abruptly and heartlessly as Heath had left me. With Heath, I could be myself. But with Garrett, I could be someone better. And if Heath wanted to see me again? He could watch me on television winning goddamn gold medals with Garrett Lin.

Asheville Citizen-Times newspaper, which reported how a man – his name isn’t given – walked into a branch of Bank of America, picked up a deposit slip and wrote on it: This is a stickkup. Put all you muny in this bag. Then, like all polite robbers, he waited in a queue to hand the note to the teller. As he stood there, he started worrying that someone might have seen him write the note, and that the police could be called before he reached the window. Thinking quickly – or as quickly as he was able – he left the Bank of America and hurried across the street to a branch of the Wells Fargo Bank. There he again waited in a queue for a few minute, until it was his turn to see the teller. He handed her the note and she read it. Realising that he wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer, she told him that, unfortunately, she couldn’t accept the demand because it was written on rival bank’s stationary; he would either have to rewrite the note on a Wells Fargo slip, or go back to the Bank of America. ‘Looking somewhat defeated, the man left the Wells Fargo Bank,’ says the Citizen-Times. He was arrested a few minutes later – in the queue back over at the Bank of America.

Witches own nothing, so we’re not interested in preserving value or making profits, and as for the choice between one thing and another, when you live for many hundreds of years, you know that every opportunity will come again. We have different needs. You have to repair your balloon and keep it in good condition, and that takes time and trouble, I see that; but for us to fly, all we have to do is tear off a branch of cloud-pine; any will do, and there are plenty more. We don’t feel cold, so we need no warm clothes. We have no means of exchange apart from mutual aid. If a witch needs something, another witch will give it to her. If there is a war to be fought, we don’t consider cost one of the factors in deciding whether or not it is right to fight. Nor do we have any notion of honor, as bears do, for instance. An insult to a bear is a deadly thing. To us... inconceivable. How could you insult a witch? What would it matter if you did?” “Well, I’m kinda with you on that. Sticks and stones, I’ll break yer bones, but names ain’t worth a quarrel. But ma’am, you see my dilemma, I hope. I’m a simple aeronaut, and I’d like to end my days in comfort. Buy a little farm, a few head of cattle, some horses...Nothing grand, you notice. No palace or slaves or heaps of gold. Just the evening wind over the sage, and a ceegar, and a glass of bourbon whiskey. Now the trouble is, that costs money. So I do my flying in exchange for cash, and after every job I send some gold back to the Wells Fargo Bank, and when I’ve got enough, ma’am, I’m gonna sell this balloon and book me a passage on a steamer to Port Galveston, and I’ll never leave the ground again.” “There’s another difference between us, Mr. Scoresby. A witch would no sooner give up flying than give up breathing. To fly is to be perfectly ourselves.” “I see that, ma’am, and I envy you; but I ain’t got your sources of satisfaction. Flying is just a job to me, and I’m just a technician. I might as well be adjusting valves in a gas engine or wiring up anbaric circuits. But I chose it, you see. It was my own free choice. Which is why I find this notion of a war I ain’t been told nothing about kinda troubling.” “Iorek Byrnison’s quarrel with his king is part of it too,” said the witch. “This child is destined to play a part in that.” “You speak of destiny,” he said, “as if it was fixed. And I ain’t sure I like that any more than a war I’m enlisted in without knowing about it. Where’s my free will, if you please?

Mythomania—or plain old lying—infiltrated churches, schools, hair salons, corporate boardrooms, courtrooms, and nightclubs. Smith & Wesson received seven hundred write-in votes in Topeka’s mayoral race. The Library of Congress was under pressure to ban its copy of the Gutenberg Bible for flaunting the word fornicate and the first two syllables of the word sodomy. Speechwriters jumped aboard. Nannies and city councilmen in Prescott, Arizona, denounced the devil’s codex implanted in the due process clause of the U.S. Constitution; NASA was burning down forests in Idaho; the Census Bureau was refusing to count people with blue eyes; Grover Cleveland’s skull was buried under the Watergate complex; vigilantes roamed the nighttime streets of Fargo in search of Democrats and Kenyans; Columbine was a CIA operation; Pearl Harbor never happened; corporations were people; Amazon was a distinguished citizen. In Fulda, where the Truth Tellers were led by Dink O’Neill, his brother Chub, and Chamber of Commerce President Earl Fenstermacher, the burdens of seeding fake unfake news kept them hopping through the hot days of September 2019. Boyd Halverson’s contributions were sorely missed. “Boyd had a knack for it,” Chub told Earl after their bimonthly Kiwanis brunch. “I don’t know how we’ll replace him.

In other words, you need to be a bureaucracy in order to survive one. This is the overwhelming narrative of modern American economics, that the individual, particularly the individual without a lot of money, is inherently overmatched. He’s a loser. And if he falls into any part of the machine, he goes straight to the bottom. And then there’s the most disturbing truth of all. People assume that a system that favors the rich likes rich people. This isn’t true. Our bureaucracies respond to the money rich people have, and they bend to the legal might the rich can hire, but they don’t give a damn about rich people. You can be rich and still fall into any one of a dozen financial/legal meat grinders, from an erroneously collapsed credit score to a robo-signed foreclosure to a stolen identity to a retirement account vaporized by institutional theft and fraud. The system eats up rich people, too, because it’s not concerned with protecting any individuals, even the rich ones. These bureaucracies accomplish just two things: they make small piles of money smaller and big piles of money bigger. It’s a system that doesn’t care whose hands end up holding the bag, or how long those hands get to hold the bag. It just relentlessly creates and punishes losers, who get to sit beneath an ever-narrowing group of winners, who may or may not stay on top for long. What does get preserved, in all cases, is a small constellation of sprawling, interconnected financial companies, whose names and managements may change (Bear becomes Chase, Wachovia becomes Wells Fargo, etc.), but whose entrenched influence remains the same. In other words, this is a machine that loves and protects money but somehow hates all people.

sit on a man’s back, choking him and making him carry me, and yet assure myself and others that I am very sorry for him and wish to ease his lot by all possible means—except by getting off his back.”[1] True then and there, and true now and here. There is so much poverty in this land not in spite of our wealth but because of it. Which is to say, it’s not about them. It’s about us. “It is really so simple,” Tolstoy wrote. “If I want to aid the poor, that is, to help the poor not to be poor, I ought not to make them poor.”[2] How do we, today, make the poor in America poor? In at least three ways. First, we exploit them. We constrain their choice and power in the labor market, the housing market, and the financial market, driving down wages while forcing the poor to overpay for housing and access to cash and credit. Those of us who are not poor benefit from these arrangements. Corporations benefit from worker exploitation, sure, but so do consumers who buy the cheap goods and services the working poor produce, and so do those of us directly or indirectly invested in the stock market. Landlords are not the only ones who benefit from housing exploitation; many homeowners do, too, their property values propped up by the collective effort to make housing scarce and expensive. The banking and payday lending industries profit from the financial exploitation of the poor, but so do those of us with free checking accounts at Bank of America or Wells Fargo, as those accounts are subsidized by billions of dollars in overdraft fees.[3] If we burn coal, we get electricity, but we get sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide and other airborne toxins, too. We can’t have the electricity without producing the pollution. Opulence in America works the same way. Someone bears the cost.

V roce 2010 se Adam Grant, profesor managementu na Wharton School of Business na University of Pennsylvania a autor knihy Dávat a brát: Skrytá dynamika úspěchu, rozhodl zkoumat efektivitu fundraisingového oddělení, které vedl jeho kolega, a porozumět tomu, co funguje a co ne. Práce byla jednoduchá: zaměstnanci obvolávali absolventy a snažili se je přesvědčit, aby věnovali peníze do stipendijního fondu pro mimořádné studenty, jejichž rodiny si nemohou dovolit platit za vysokou školu. Volající byli instruováni, aby popsali zoufalou finanční situaci univerzity a působivé úspěchy budoucích příjemců. Absolventi se dozvídali, že univerzita potřebuje více investovat například do informatiky nebo manažerských oborů, aby vychovala novou generaci lídrů. Koneckonců, jde o budoucí pracovní sílu nové ekonomiky, vysvětlovali volající. Podle všeho byla tato prezentace docela inspirující. I přes veškeré své úsilí však fundraiseři měli jen malý úspěch. Jejich čísla se nezlepšila, ani když vysvětlovali, jak těžce recese postihla rozpočet univerzity. Jejich práce navíc připomínala běžnou práci – zahrnovala opakující se úkoly, dlouhé hodiny sezení a občas také nepříjemné zákazníky. Netřeba dodávat, že fluktuace pracovníků tohoto oddělení byla mimořádně vysoká, což pracovní morálku jen zhoršovalo. Proto Grant přišel s nápadem, jak efektivitu volajících zlepšit… a trvalo to jen pět minut. Profesor Grant zařídil, že studenti, kteří obdrželi stipendia, přijdou do kanceláře a během pěti minut fundraiserům popíší, jak obdržené stipendium změnilo jejich život. Studenti jim řekli, jak moc si cení jejich těžké práce. Přestože lidé, na jejichž životy měla práce oddělení dopad, s volajícími pobyli jen krátce, výsledky byly ohromující. V následujícím měsíci fundraiseři zvýšili svůj průměrný týdenní příjem o více než 400 procent. V jiné podobné studii volající zvýšili čas strávený na telefonu o 142 procent a o 171 procent výši získaných finančních prostředků. Jako sociální zvířata potřebujeme vidět skutečný, hmatatelný dopad našeho času a úsilí, aby práce měla smysl i pro nás, abychom byli motivováni se zlepšovat. Tato logika se zdá být v souladu s Milgramovými zjištěními, v tomto případě je však výsledek pozitivní. Pokud jsme schopni fyzicky vidět pozitivní dopad našich rozhodnutí nebo práce, nejen že máme pocit, že naše práce stojí za to, ale také nás inspiruje k usilovnějšímu výkonu. Kontrolní skupina, kterou studenti nenavštívili, nevykazovala zlepšení prodeje ani netrávila na telefonu více času. Třetí skupina, která si prostě vyslechla manažera, jak moc stipendium pro studenty znamenalo, svou výkonnost také nijak nezvýšila. Jinými slovy, když nám šéf řekne, jak je naše práce důležitá, zdaleka se to nevyrovná tomu, uvidíme-li to sami. Na úvěrovém oddělení Wells Fargo Bank měli podobnou zkušenost. Když pozvali zákazníky do banky, aby popsali, jak jim úvěr změnil život – jak jim umožnil koupit si dům nebo splatit dluh – mělo to dramatický vliv na motivaci zaměstnanců banky, aby pomohli i dalším lidem. Na vlastní oči viděli, jaký dopad měla jejich práce na něčí život. Jedná se o významný posun v tom, jak zaměstnanci vnímají svou práci, že má skutečně smysl. Aniž by si toho nutně byli vědomi, mnozí pak přestali chodit do práce, aby prodávali úvěry, ale aby pomáhali lidem. Další důkaz toho, jak moc se kvalita naší práce zlepšuje, můžeme-li si výsledky spojit s lidskou bytostí, byl pozorován ve studii, která zjistila, že radiologové velmi zpřesnili svá zjištění, pokud rentgeny, které zkoumali, byly doplněny o fotografii pacienta. Adam Grant uskutečnil jinou studii mezi záchranáři v jednom rekreačním stře

Who you are tomorrow begins with what you do today

The cases of Mylan and Wells Fargo are recent examples of an older and common pattern, by which policies of payment for measured performance lead employees to engage in actions that create long-run damage to a firm’s reputation.

American Express (AXP) Apple (AAPL) Bank of America (BAC) Bank of New York Mellon (BK) Charter Communications (CHTR) The Coca-Cola Company (KO) Delta Air Lines (DAL) Goldman Sachs (GS) JPMorgan Chase (JPM) Moody's (MCO) Southwest Airlines (LUV) United Continental Holdings (UAL) U.S. Bancorp (USB) USG Corporation (USG) Wells Fargo (WFC)

He wasn’t afraid of me, I write. That was his first mistake.

Were you flirting with this boy?” she asks Allison.

Well, only someone with massive daddy issues could write the shit you do, Mallory.

downside of having a fertile imagination. Possibilities became probabilities, and

I want to look her in the eyes and say: It’s me, I’m the one, and I did it all to protect women like us. I did it, and I’d do it again.

The loan department of Wells Fargo Bank had a similar experience. When they invited a customer to come into the bank and describe how a loan had changed their life—how it allowed them to buy a house or pay off a debt—it had a dramatic effect on the motivation of bank employees to help more people do the same. They could see for themselves the impact their work was having in someone’s life. This is a significant shift in how the employees perceived their jobs and it is foundational to having a sense of purpose in the work we do. Without necessarily being aware of it, many of the employees stopped coming to work to sell loans and started coming to work to help people. Further proof of how much the quality of our work improves when we can attach a human being to the results was seen in a study that found that simply showing radiologists a photograph of a patient led to a dramatic improvement in the accuracy of their diagnostic findings. Adam Grant conducted another study on lifeguards at a community recreation center.

I’d had this same thought about my father. His abuse was all emotional and psychological; the only marks it left were internal. Impossible to see, easy to deny.

I remember every man I’ve killed, in vivid detail. His name, his crimes. His last words, if I allowed him to have any.

True justice would have been bolting the fraternity house doors and setting the whole place on fire, burning every one of those boys in their beds. I might not even have needed to douse the place in kerosene first, considering every surface is sticky with spilled alcohol. But I can’t kill them all, not unless I want to get caught. I’ve spent the past sixteen years murdering men who deserve it, and I’m not about to get sloppy now.

desire building in me like a scream.

Unfortunately, this story may not have a happy ending, and the last word could likely be that of Altman, who says, "You get tired painting your pictures and going down to the street corner and selling them for a dollar. You get the occasional Fargo, but you've still got to make them for nothing, and you get nothing back. It's disastrous for the film industry, disastrous for film art. I have no optimism whatsoever.

He wasn’t afraid of me, I write. That was his first mistake

marriage.

He's just like the rest of them. Bash, Alex. My father. They want us to bend and bend, let them say and do whatever they want to us. They get away with it, over and over again.

She hustles Wes and me out the door, and I don’t have a chance to peek at my reflection again until we get to Wes’s car. I’m startled by what I see staring back from the dark, dirt-flecked windows. My lips are ripe-apple red, and it changes my whole face. I look like a completely different person—someone bold, sexy, confident. I’m not sure who I’m supposed to be, but I definitely don’t look like myself tonight. And isn’t that the whole point of Halloween?

Don't envy what people have; emulate what they did to have it.

So tonight I prepare: picking out the perfect outfit, shaving my legs, shaping my nails. All the things most women do to prepare for a date. But little do they know: killing a man is so much more satisfying than fucking a man could ever be.