Fixer Quotes

Where to look if you've lost your mind?

People who are hurting don't need Avoiders, Protectors, or Fixers. What we need are patient, loving witness. People to sit quietly and hold space for us. People to stand in helpful vigil to our pain.

Rien n’est plus trompeur qu’une photo : on croit fixer un moment heureux pour l’éternité alors qu’on ne crée que de la nostalgie

I have a passing fondness for explosions." That was concerning on so many levels.

Many times when we help we do not really serve. . . . Serving is also different from fixing. One of the pioneers of the Human Potential Movement, Abraham Maslow, said, "If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.' Seeing yourself as a fixer may cause you to see brokenness everywhere, to sit in judgment of life itself. When we fix others, we may not see their hidden wholeness or trust the integrity of the life in them. Fixers trust their own expertise. When we serve, we see the unborn wholeness in others; we collaborate with it and strengthen it. Others may then be able to see their wholeness for themselves for the first time.

Rien n'est plus trompeur qu'une photo : On croit fixer un moment heureux pour l'éternité alors qu'on ne crée que de la nostalgie. On appuie sur le déclencheur, et hop, une seconde plus tard, l'instant à disparu.

I fix what's broken - except in the heart.

...because "Mommy" is forever. It's such a powerful name. Mommy means "I trust you." Mommy means "you will protect me." Mommy is for shouting when you need someone dependable and for laughing with when you are excited. Mommy is for crying on and cuddling with when you are sad, or giggling and hiding behind when you are embarrassed. Mommy is the fixer of boo-boos and the mender of broken hearts. Mommy is a comfort place - a safe place. Mommy means "you are mine and I am yours and we are family.

It's your favorite person." "No. You're not." "I won't embarrass you by proving I am.

All you have to do is take a man at face value. Don't go into it thinking you can change them. Men aren't fixer-uppers, not like a house or a car. You buy them as is.

The North American Church is at a critical juncture. The gospel of grace is being confused and compromised by silence, seduction, and outright subversion. The vitality of the faith is being jeopardized. The lying slogans of the fixers who carry religion like a sword of judgment pile up with impunity. Let ragamuffins everywhere gather as a confessing Church to cry out in protest. Revoke the licenses of religious leaders who falsify the idea of God. Sentence them to three years in solitude with the Bible as their only companion.

I’d tell you that you can’t stay mad forever,” Ivy commented, “but I’m pretty sure you’d take that as a challenge.

Mr. Collins shook his head. “Stay off the roof,” he ordered. Then he paused. “Stay off all the roofs.” The fact that he felt he had to make that clarification told me a great deal about Asher Rhodes.

There are no wrong books. What's wrong is the fear of them.

I was an empty shell. Like a vacant house―condemned―for months I'd been utterly uninhabitable. Now I was a little improved. The front room was in better repair. But that was all―just the one small piece. He deserved better than that―better than a one-room, falling-down fixer-upper. No amount of investment on his part could put me back in working order.

We are a nation not only of dreamers, but also of fixers. We have looked at our land and people, and said, time and time again, "This is not good enough; we can be better.

Asher smiled beatifically, as if he’d been waiting his whole life for someone to ask just that question. “How would you feel about some Mentos and Diet Coke?

I could see, already, how this was going to end. "You'll have checkmate in three moves... Luckily for me," I told him, my fingers closing around my own queen, "I'll have checkmate in two.

Some people just need to be flying tackled.

There’s no life-work balance. Okay? Get it? It’s all life. You get the same twenty-four hours as the next girl. Fill yours with what you love.

So what is it in a human life that creates bravery, kindness, wisdom, and resilience? What if it's pain? What if it's the struggle?... The bravest people I know are those who've walked through the fire and come out on the other side. They are those who've overcome, not those who've had nothing to overcome. .. (P)eople who are hurting don't need Avoiders, Protectors, or Fixers. What we need are patient, loving witnesses. People to sit quietly and hold space for us. People to stand in helpless vigil to our pain.

As your perspective of the world increases not only is the pain it inflicts on you less but also its meaning. Understanding the world requires you to take a certain distance from it. Things that are too small to see with the naked eye, such as molecules and atoms, we magnify. Things that are too large, such as cloud formations, river deltas, constellations, we reduce. At length we bring it within the scope of our senses and we stabilize it with fixer. When it has been fixed we call it knowledge. Throughout our childhood and teenage years, we strive to attain the correct distance to objects and phenomena. We read, we learn, we experience, we make adjustments. Then one day we reach the point where all the necessary distances have been set, all the necessary systems have been put in place. That is when time begins to pick up speed. It no longer meets any obstacles, everything is set, time races through our lives, the days pass by in a flash and before we know that is happening we are fort, fifty, sixty... Meaning requires content, content requires time, time requires resistance. Knowledge is distance, knowledge is stasis and the enemy of meaning. My picture of my father on that evening in 1976 is, in other words, twofold: on the one hand I see him as I saw him at that time, through the eyes of an eight-year-old: unpredictable and frightening; on the other hand, I see him as a peer through whose life time is blowing and unremittingly sweeping large chunks of meaning along with it.

I'd tell you that was pretty much impossible," Asher replied, "but your Tess Kendrick. My spider senses tell me that impossible is kind of your thing.

What are we doing?" Asher helped himself to a seat at my table. "We aren't doing anything," I told him bluntly. "My mistake. I thought we were brooding in Henry's general direction. Like so." He adopted stormy countenance, then gestured to me. "Yours is better." "Go away, Asher." "You say go away, I hear be my bosom buddy." He gave an elaborate shrug. "Seriously, though: friendship bracelets—yea or nay?

You were only there to be a healer. A fixer. To prepare them for the next love. Not yours.

We're all liars sometimes.

Henry had a rare gift for sounding reasonable no matter what he was saying.

Walking in heels while wearing a ball gown was, as it turned out, more difficult than finagling an invitation to a state dinner.

Examine this statement: ‘A woman cannot be a poet.’ Dr Samuel Johnson (Englishman 1709-84 Occupation: Language Fixer and Big Mouth.) What then shall I give up? My poetry or my womanhood?

You need to live in a dome initially, but over time you could terraform Mars to look like Earth and eventually walk around outside without anything on... So it's a fixer-upper of a planet.

Another [change] affects Chip and Joanna Gaines. This couple, who had reached unfathomable heights of popularity with their ‘Fixer Upper’ TV program in the 21st century, are instead homeless and living in a large cardboard box behind the Waco, Texas, bus station.” “That’s harsh,” said Eddie. “What did they do to deserve that?” “Nothing. It’s just one of those undesirable consequences that we could not avoid. It was either that or lose Australia.

When it comes to social justice, the role of the white ally is not to be a savior or a fixer. Instead, the role of the ally is to find other white people and talk to make them see that many of the benefits they’ve enjoyed in life are direct results of the fact that someone else did not have the same benefits.

Et tu, Henry?” Asher held a hand to his chest. Henry didn’t bat an eye. He was clearly used to the dramatics.

I think brains might be machines that turn information into feelings and feelings back into decisions and I've discovered that my machine has been put together in a strange way and it translates life in a strange way but I have no way to fix this—I'm not a brain-machine fixer, I'm just a haver of a brain, like anyone, and none of us know how to fix ourselves, at least not entirely, not well enough

I'm very harsh on real estate agents. I'm not sure why. Maybe it's because of how the call every small house 'charming' and every run-down house a 'great fixer-upper'. Just once, I'd like them to show me a house and declare, 'This one's a piece of crap'.

You could not pity anything if you weren't a man; pity was a surprise to God. It was not his invention.

You’re a fixer, Grant mused. You’re also a colossal pain in the ass. The thing is, it’s the pains in the ass that change the world.

Would you say you have a "philosophy" Of your own? If so what is it?' 'If I have it's all skin and bones...If I have any philosophy...it's that life could be better than it is.

Emilia stared at me for three or four more seconds, then gave up on pumping me for information. “We should go,” she decided with the force of a monarch declaring law. “I have Latin first period. The Aeneid waits for no man.

Over the next hour and a half, I came to the conclusion that Emilia Rhodes was either the devil incarnate or the second coming of Coco Chanel.

Tess,” I said. For a moment, Emilia and I studied each other. She was tall, with strawberry-blond hair and eyes that walked the line between green and blue. She wore almost no makeup, except for a light gloss on her lips. “So you’re Ivy Kendrick’s sister,” she said finally. “I thought you’d be taller.” “I’ll get right to work on that.” Emilia cracked a very small smile.

Asher waved away my words, unconcerned. “If Emilia was predisposed to fratricide, I wouldn’t have made it past kindergarten,” he said. “I am, however, somewhat concerned that she might kill you.

Tell her," I said, "that I am my mother's daughter.

There are a lot of ways to castrate a bull," I said, my words deliberate and slow. "You can band the balls off, so they shrivel up and die. Or you can take a knife, and slide it just so." I demonstrated with my free hand. "I grew up on a ranch. I know a lot about castrating bulls.

[Adult children of a BPD parent] may seem old before their time or like an old soul (and probably were that way as children too.) They may easily assume the role of fixer and nurturer. They're the ones friends lean on, the ones to whom people tell their problems. Helping others gives them a sense of purpose and worth.

We're persecuted in the most civilized languages.

I don’t want to be alone,” I whispered. The second those words left my mouth, Vivvie flew across the room. She hugged me like hugging was a contact sport.

You aren’t the enemy,” Henry said, dropping his arm to his side once more and taking a step back. “That doesn’t mean our goals are aligned.

Is that your professional take on the situation?” I kept my voice dry and caustic. This wasn’t worth yelling over. It wasn’t even worth a heated whisper.

No. I couldn’t do this, couldn’t go down that rabbit hole. Ivy’s going to be fine. I’ll hate her forever if something happens to her. She’s going to be fine.

Charity you can give even when you haven't got.

people who are hurting don’t need Avoiders, Protectors, or Fixers. What we need are patient, loving witnesses. People to sit quietly and hold space for us. People to stand in helpless vigil to our pain.

Adam’s blue eyes flicked briefly over to mine as he directed me to turn onto a major street. Once he was satisfied that I could, in fact, turn without causing my car—or any car in the near vicinity—to explode, he allowed himself to actually converse. “You don’t trust people?” “Not to hit my car, or not to screw up my life?” “Either.” That seemed like more of an answer than a question, so I didn’t reply.

I lie to her. Because this world is not safe. The people who are supposed to protect us, the people we are supposed to trust -- I know that sometimes they are the ones who do the most harm.

Information is power. You can never know ahead of time which pieces will be worth the most.

Never agree to marry a man because he has potential. Men are not houses, they do not make good fixer-uppers.

What do you want me to do, Adam?” my sister asked finally, her voice soft enough now that I had to strain to hear. “Things were bad in Montana. I’m not sending her back, and I am not shipping her off to some boarding school. And don’t give me that look—you were the one who told me to bring her here three years ago!

Darn you and your infernal logic.” Asher ran both hands through his hair, mussing it to ridiculous heights. “Fine,” he capitulated. “But I want in. Whatever you’re planning to do about this, whatever Vivvie’s doing, I want in.

A bunch of different people appear, and they’ve got their own situations and reasons and excuses, and each one is pursuing his or her own brand of justice or happiness. As a result, nobody can do anything. Obviously. I mean, it’s basically impossible for everybody’s justice to prevail or everybody’s happiness to triumph, so chaos takes over. And then what do you think happens? Simple – a god appears in the end and starts directing traffic. “You go over there, and you come here, and you get together with her, and you just sit still for a while.” Like that. He’s kind of a fixer, and in the end everything works out perfectly. They call this ‘deus ex machina.

Tommy was . . . exciting.” It took her a moment to decide on the word. “He was motion and emotion. He never stopped moving, never stopped feeling. He was stubborn and loyal and never once thought about the consequences of anything he did.

I am somewhat of a meliorist. That is to say, I act as an optimist because I find I cannot act at all, as a pessimist. One often feels helpless in the face of the confusion of these times, such a mass of apparently uncontrollable events and experiences to live through, attempt to understand, and if at all possible, give order to; but one must not withdraw from the task if he has some small things to offer - he does so at the risk of diminishing his humanity.

Rien n'est plus trompeur qu'une photo. On croit fixer un moment heureux pour l' éternité alors qu'on ne crée que de la nostalgie. On appuie sur le déclencheur, et hop, une seconde plus tard, l'instant à disparu.

Oh God, Tessie... That is my daughter... And the next person who tries to get between my and my daughter is going to rue their existence on this earth... Every secret you've been keeping will find its way out. Every decision you make will be questioned. You will be audited, investigated, and transferred to the most hellish nightmare of a desk job I can find. Now, get out of my way. - Ivy

Bodie’s phone rang. Ivy. I knew it was her, the way you know the protagonist of a horror movie really shouldn’t go down into that basement. Bodie took the call, then nodded at me to go back inside.

So sleep now, without fear for your life, and if you should ever manage to get out of prison, keep in mind that the purpose of freedom is to create it for others.

Ms. Kendrick, are you listening to me?” Headmaster Raleigh asked. Not in the least. “Yes, sir.” The sir seemed to appease him somewhat.

In my dreams I ate and I ate my dreams.

I don’t need your permission to search your locker.” The headmaster’s tone drew my attention back in his direction. This, I inferred from the rise in volume, was supposed to be the voice of authority. If you didn’t need my permission, I thought, then why did you ask for it?

By the time I'm done," I said, "that picture will win you this election." ... There was a long moment of silence, and then Emilia tossed her ponytail over her shoulders. "There's no way you're that good." I smiled. "Try me.

A meshummed gives up one God for another. I don't want either. We live in a world where the clock ticks fast while he's on his timeless mountain staring in space. He doesn't see us and he doesn't care. Today I want my piece of bread, not in Paradise.

I take it Asher called you?” “What’s your endgame here, Henry? Why are you going?

Emilia hooked her arm through mine, like we were the best of friends. “You solve problems,” she said again. “I have a problem. Ergo . . .

I told Vivvie what the person who’d answered had said, verbatim.

will you please explain how you can cry for a dead dog yet belong to a society of fanatics that urges death on human beings who happen to be Jews? Explain to me the logic of it.

Who invented my life?

You’re only looking at the obstacles. You gotta start looking at solutions.

Now was a clusterfuck, the fuckiest clusterfuck in the history of clusterfuckery.

She had my smile, I thought, forcing myself to stare masochistically at the curve of her lips. On the heels of that crippling thought came a second one. Ivy knew Adam when she was young.

Girlfriend number seventeen," Asher replied. "Before Sophie and after Sarah." "You'd had seventeen girlfriends by the time you were fourteen?" I asked. "The ladies, he replied with a shrug. They love me. It's because I'm so charming." "You're balancing on one leg on the roof of a chapel. You're not charming. You're an idiot.

Where is that incredible promise I hear my colleagues chatting about in the teachers’ lounge?” Mr. Simpson asked Ryan facetiously. “You have a lot of fans at this school, Mr. Washburn. Surely they can’t all be mistaken about your intellectual capacity. Perhaps the emancipation of every enslaved human being in this country is simply not significant enough to merit a student of your remarkable caliber taking note of the date?

They say God appeared in history and used it for his purposes, but if that was so he had no pity for men.

I was comfortable with silence, comfortable with letting questions go unanswered. Sometimes it was my best tool for making a person say more.

The two of us rode in companionable silence until the car pulled into Ivy’s drive. Bodie cut the engine, and I reached for the door handle.

I looked down at my hands, unable to meet her eyes. My wrists were still angry and red. The raw skin looked how I felt.

Tallyho, friends of Asher!” Asher had impeccable timing. He waltzed into the room and hopped up on the computer table, his legs dangling down, like he didn’t have a care in the world. Like the tension in the room wasn’t thick enough that you could have cut it with a knife. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked blithely. Just Henry telling me he thinks my sister might be working to cover up his grandfather’s murder. Henry must have read something in my expression, because a hint of remorse flashed across his features.

When the maker's (or fixer's) activity is immediately situated within a community of use, it can be enlivened by this kind of direct perception. Then the social character of his work isn't separate from its internal or "engineering" standards; the work is improved through relationships with others. It may even be the case that what those standards are, what perfection consists of, is something that comes to light only through these iterated exchanges with others who use the product, as well as other craftsmen in the same trade. Through work that had this social character, some shared conception of the good is lit up, and becomes concrete.

Is this the part where you suggest a highly inadvisable way of putting people in the mood to talk, in hopes that someone can shed light on who the"--Henry glanced at Vivvie--"hedgehog might be?" "It's funny," I told Henry... "but the moment you said inadvisable, I had a thought." ... "The hedgehog?" Emilia asked, wrinkling her brow.

I understand you’ve been spending some time in the company of my son.” Adam’s father had a disconcerting stare. His eyes were hazel, close in color to my own, but there was an uncanny awareness in them—like he knew what you’d had for breakfast that morning and how you would sleep that night.

Keep in mind, Yakov Shepsovitch, that if your life is without value, so is mine. If the law does not protect you, it will not, in the end, protect me. Therefore I dare not fail you, and that is what causes me anxiety—that I must not fail you.

Let’s call it a school project on the Pierce piece.” I bared my teeth in something vaguely resembling a smile. “You cited an anonymous source, saying that the decision was all but made. I’m wondering what made you think this information was legit.

Being loved and admired by a man like that—and she knew that this man, this mechanic, this fixer of machines with their broken hearts, did indeed love and admire her—was like walking in the sunshine; it gave the same feeling of warmth and pleasure to bask in the love of one who has promised it, publicly at a wedding ceremony, and who is constant in his promise that such love will be given for the rest of his days. What more could any woman ask? None of us, she thought, not one single one of us, could ask for anything more than that.

Across from me, Ivy began applying clotted cream to her scone. “What do you want, Tess?” “Not tea and crumpets,” I muttered. “That’s for damn sure.” An older lady at the table next to us shot me a dirty look. I stared down at the lace tablecloth. “I didn’t ask you what you don’t want,” Ivy informed me. “I asked what you do want. Don’t think of this as a heart-to-heart. Think of it as a negotiation. I want you to give this arrangement a chance.” Ivy’s voice never changed—not in volume, not in tone. “Tell me what you want, and I’ll see what I can do.

But the point of working hard isn’t really getting people to notice how hard you work. It’s about giving it your all and being able to walk away with no regrets. Doing a good job shouldn’t be so someone else tells you that you did good. It should be about you feeling good about your effort.

It was so wrong to encourage Jacob. Pure selfishness. It didn't matter that I'd tried to make my position clear. If he felt any hope at all that this could turn into something other than friendship, then I hadn't been clear enough. How could I explain so that he would understand? I was an empty shell. Like a vacant house—condemned—for months I'd been utterly uninhabitable. Now I was a little improved. The front room was in better repair. But that was all—just the one small piece. He deserved better than that—better than a one-room, falling-down fixer-upper. No amount of investment on his part could put me back in working order.

As far as I could tell, my history teacher had three passions in life: quoting Shakespeare, identifying historical inaccuracies in cable TV shows, and berating Ryan Washburn. “Eighteen sixty-three, Mr. Washburn. Is that so hard to remember? Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation in eighteen sixty-three.” Ryan was a big guy: a little on the quiet side, a little shy. I had no idea what it was about him that had convinced Mr. Simpson he needed to be taken down a notch—or seven. But more and more, this was how history class went: Simpson called on Ryan, repeatedly, until he made a mistake. And then it began.

I guess I always thought,” Ivy said softly, “that if I was strong enough, if I was formidable enough, if I was successful enough—I could be enough. For you. I thought that if I became this person who could take on the world, then I could take care of you.” She shook her head—at her past self, maybe, or to snap herself out of it. “When I came to Montana that summer, Tess, I thought I was ready. I really did. I was going to give you everything. But Gramps called me out, and he was right, Tessie. I wasn’t doing it for you. You were thriving. You were happy. And I . . .” The words got caught in her throat, but she forced them out. “I was your sister. I was never going to be strong enough or successful enough. There was never going to be a right time to tell you. You were happy. And you deserved to be happy.

My thoughts shift to my friends. I'd been so angry with them for grabbing my pain from me in the wake of the News. But maybe my friends were loving me the best way they knew how, just like I was trying to love Amma. We think our job as humans is to avoid pain, our job as parents is to protect our children from pain, and our job as friends is to fix each other's pain. Maybe that's why we all feel like failures so often--because we all have the wrong job description for love. What my friends didn't know about me and I didn't know about Amma is that people who are hurting don't need Avoiders, Protectors, or Fixers. What we need are patient, loving witnesses. People to sit quietly and hold space for us. People to stand in helpless vigil to our pain. There on the floor, I promise myself that I'll be that kind of mother, that kind of friend. I'll show up and stand humble in the face of a loved one's pain. I'll admit I'm as empty-handed, dumbstruck, and out of ideas as she is. I won't try to make sense of things or require more than she can offer. I won't let my discomfort with her pain keep me from witnessing it for her. I'l never try to grab or fix her pain, because I know that for as long as it takes, he pain will also be her comfort. It will be all she has left. Grief is love's souvenir. It's our proof that we once loved. Grief is the receipt we wave in the air that says to the world: Look! Love was once mine. I loved well. Here is my proof that I paid the price. So I'll just show up and sit quietly and practice not being God with her. I'm so sorry, I'll say. Thank you for trusting me enough to invite me close. I see your pain and it's real. I'm so sorry.

One of the strangest things about these five downhill years of the Nixon presidency is that despite all the savage excesses committed by the people he chose to run the country, no real opposition or realistic alternative to Richard Nixon’s cheap and mean-hearted view of the American Dream has ever developed. It is almost as if that sour 1968 election rang down the curtain on career politicians. This is the horror of American politics today - not that Richard Nixon and his fixers have been crippled, convicted, indicted, disgraced and even jailed - but that the only available alternatives are not much better; the same dim collection of burned-out hacks who have been fouling our air with their gibberish for the last tenty years. How long, oh Lord, how long? And how much longer will we have to wait before some high-powered shark with a fistful of answers will finally bring us face-to-face with the ugly question that is already so close to the surface in this country, that sooner or later even politicians will have to cope with it? Is this democracy worth all the risks and problems that necessarily go with it? Or, would we all be happier by admitting that the whole thing was a lark from the start and now that it hasn’t worked out, to hell with it.

You’re quiet.” Bodie issued that statement with no small amount of suspicion. “I’m always quiet.” As Bodie pulled the car past the gates and out onto the street, he glanced at me just long enough to smirk. “And I’m always perceptive. This quiet is a different quiet.” My mind was awash in the day’s events. Georgia’s visit. Vivvie and the article on Pierce. The two names from Henry’s list. Adam’s father being the one who had arranged the get-together in that photograph. “I’m fluent in all varieties of Kendrick silences,” Bodie declared. “And you and your sister both stare very intently at absolutely nothing when the wheels are turning in here.” He lazily reached over and tapped the side of my head. I swatted his hand away. “I have a lot to think about.

I took a step forward. Henry caught my elbow. "No bloodshed," he said. "No blackmail. No obstruction of justice." "You drive a hard bargain," I told him. "What are your thoughts on extortion?" Without waiting for an answer, I headed for Bancroft's car. Henry and Asher followed on my heels. "The cat is dancing in the catnip," Asher reported back to Vivvie. "Grumpy lion is grumpy." "Did you just refer to me as a grumpy lion?" Henry asked Asher. "Absolutely not," Asher promised. Then he took the phone off speaker and lowered his voice. "Suspicious lion is suspicious," he stage whispered to Vivvie.