Fringe Benefits Quotes

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We do not need magic to transform our world. We carry all of the power we need inside ourselves already.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters. I wish you all very good lives.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
I was set free, because my greatest fear had already been realized, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
I have one last hope for you, which is something that I already had at 21. The friends with whom I sat on graduation day have been my friends for life. They are my children’s godparents, the people to whom I’ve been able to turn in times of trouble, friends who have been kind enough not to sue me when I’ve used their names for Death Eaters. At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again, and, of course, by the knowledge that we held certain photographic evidence that would be exceptionally valuable if any of us ran for Prime Minister.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
I have my sources." Somehow, saying I'd heard it from my mom sounded less cool. "You've decided, right? I mean, it sounds like a good deal, seeing as she's going to give you fringe benefits..." He gave me a level look. "What happens between her and me is none of your business," he replied crisply. ... Dimitri arched an eyebrow, then jerked his head back where we'd come from. "You hang out in his room a lot?" Several retorts popped into my head, and then a golden one took precedence. "What happens between him and me is none of your business." I managed a tone very similar to he one he'd used on me when making a similar comment about him and Tasha.
Richelle Mead (Frostbite (Vampire Academy, #2))
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all - in which case, you fail by default.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
Who hit you?" "Why, so you can go beat him up?" "One of the fringe benefits of being my human servant is my protection." "I don't need your protection, Jean-Claude." "He hurt you." "And I shoved a gun into his groin and made him tell me everything he knew," I said.
Laurell K. Hamilton (The Laughing Corpse (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #2))
You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
Failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
Unlike any other creature on this planet, human beings can learn and understand without having experienced.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
Life is difficult, and complicated, and beyond anyone's total control, and the humility to know that will enable you to survive its vicissitudes.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people's lives simply by existing.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or to peer inside cages; they can close their minds and hearts to any suffering that does not touch them personally; they can refuse to know.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
Unlike any other creature on this planet, human beings can learn and understand without having experienced. They can think themselves into other peoples’ places. Of course, this is a power like my brand of fictional magic that is morally neutral. One might use such a power to manipulate or control, just as much as to understand or sympathize. And many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or peer inside cages. They can close their hearts and minds to any suffering that does not touch them personally. They can refuse to know. I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think that they have any fewer nightmares than I do.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
One of the many things I learned at the end of that Classics corridor down which I ventured at the age of 18, in search of something I could not then define, was this, written by the Greek author Plutarch: What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality. That is an astonishing statement and yet proven a thousand times every day of our lives. It expresses, in part, our inescapable connection with the outside world, the fact that we touch other people’s lives simply by existing.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
The knowledge that you have emerged wiser and stronger from setbacks means that you are, ever after, secure in your ability to survive. You will never truly know yourself, or the strength of your relationships, until both have been tested by adversity. Such knowledge is a true gift, for all that it is painfully won, and it has been worth more than any qualification I ever earned.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
I would like to make it clear, in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiration date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
Poverty entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression; it means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is indeed something on which to pride yourself, but poverty itself is romanticised only by fools.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
What is more, those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it through our own apathy.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives)
Choosing to live in narrow spaces leads to a form of mental agoraphobia, and that brings its own terrors. I think the willfully unimaginative see more monsters. They are often more afraid. What is more, those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters. For without ever committing an act of outright evil ourselves, we collude with it through our own apathy.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
I place a palm at his chest. His heartbeat knocks rapidly against my skin. "I never would have guessed." "What's that?" he asks on a hoarse whisper. "That you're one of those netherlings who has a rare penchant for kindness and courage." "Tut." He presses his glove over my hand. "Only when there's fringe benefits." Smiling, I rise to my toes, grip his lapels, and kiss each one of his jewels until they change to a captivating dark purple—the color of passion fruit. I ease back to the balls of my feet. "So beautiful," I whisper, tapping one of the sparkling gems. Morpheus catches my palm and kisses the scars there. "I couldn't agree more."
A.G. Howard (Splintered (Splintered, #1))
I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realized, and I was still alive,
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives)
Being read is a fringe benefit, and being read with understanding is a form of grace.
Walter Kaufmann
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might never have found the determination to succeed in the one arena I believed I truly belonged. I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, and I was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an old typewriter and a big idea. And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
Failure gave me an inner security that I had never attained by passing examinations.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
The great majority of you belong to the world's only remaining superpower. The way you vote, the way you live, the way you protest, the pressure you bring to bear on your government, has an impact way behind your borders. That is your privilege, and your burden.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
I can not remember telling my parents that I was studying classics, they might well have found out for the first time on graduation day. Of all the subjects on this planet, I think they would have been hard-put to name one less useful in Greek mythology when it came to securing the keys of an executive bathroom. Now I would like to make it clear in parenthesis, that I do not blame my parents for their point of view. There is an expiry date for blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction. The moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you. What is more, I can not criticize my parents for hoping that I would never experience poverty. They had been poor themselves, and I have since been poor. And I quite agree with them, that it is not an ennobling experience. Poverty, entails fear, and stress, and sometimes depression, It means a thousand petty humiliations and hardships. Climbing out of poverty by your own efforts, that is something by which to pride yourself, but poverty itself, is romanticized only by fools. But I feared at your age was not poverty, but failure... Now, I am not dull enough to suppose that because you are young, gifted, and well educated, that you have never known heartbreak, hardship, or heartache. Talent and intelligence, never yet inoculated anyone against the caprice of the fates... ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
Women and gay guys always get stuck with that image that they couldn’t possibly be interested in the game itself—it had to be the guys. I mean sure it’s a fringe benefit but when the game is on the last thing you’re thinking about is the bodies of the men. You’re concentrating on that red leather oval ball and if it will make it between the triad of poles that will either signify glory or failure.
Sean Kennedy (Tigers and Devils (Tigers and Devils #1))
Caregiving offers many fringe benefits, including the sheer sensory delight of nourishing and grooming, sharing, and playing. But caregiving does buttonhole you; you're stitched in one place. . . . Paul wasn't on a learning curve but seemed trapped in a circle. He's swoop forward only to loop back again and fall to earth.
Diane Ackerman (One Hundred Names for Love: A Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing)
The vocation of psychotherapy confers a few unexpected fringe benefits on its practitioners, and the following is one of them. It impels participation in a process that our modern world has all but forgotten: sitting in a room with another person for hours at a time with no purpose in mind but attending. As you do so, another world expands and comes alive to your senses--a world governed by forces that were old before humanity began.
Thomas Lewis (A General Theory of Love (Vintage))
...those who choose not to empathize enable real monsters.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
Now you might think that I chose my second theme, the importance of imagination, because of the part it played in rebuilding my life, but that is not wholly so. Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
As a fringe benefit, practicing silent solitude enables us to sleep less and to feel more energetic. The energy expended in the impostor’s exhausting pursuit of illusory happiness is now available to be focused on the things that really matter—love, friendship, and intimacy with God.
Brennan Manning (Abba's Child: The Cry of the Heart for Intimate Belonging with Bonus Content)
I shall never forget the African torture victim, a young man no older than I was at the time, who had become mentally ill after all he had endured in his homeland. He trembled uncontrollably as he spoke into a video camera about the brutality inflicted upon him. He was a foot taller than I was, and seemed as fragile as a child. I was given the job of escorting him back to the Underground Station afterwards, and this man whose life had been shattered by cruelty took my hand with exquisite courtesy, and wished me future happiness.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
It is driven not by a small band of men but by a concept that has become accepted as gospel: the idea that all economic growth benefits humankind and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits. This belief also has a corollary: that those people who excel at stoking the fires of economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born at the fringes are available for exploitation.
John Perkins (Confessions of an Economic Hit Man)
Mary Henry ought to write romance novels. She has a way of embellishing that most authors would envy.
Sandy James (Fringe Benefits (The Ladies Who Lunch Book 4))
It was one of the fringe benefits of living for so many years essentially alienated from the world around him; He could easily believe that he was right and the world was wrong.
Michael Lewis
And tomorrow, I hope that even if you remember not a single word of mine, you remember those of Seneca, another of those old Romans I met when I fled down the Classics corridor in retreat from career ladders, in search of ancient wisdom: 'As is a tale, so is life: not how long it is, but how good it is, is what matters.' I wish you all very good lives.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility, or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can't remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law, or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard. You see? If all you remember in years to come is the 'gay wizard' joke, I've come out ahead of Baroness Mary Warnock. Achievable goals: the first step to self-improvement.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
At the end of World War II, we had wage and price controls. Under wartime inflationary conditions, many employers found it difficult to recruit employees. To get around the limitations of wage control, many began to offer health care as a fringe benefit to attract workers. As a new benefit, it took some years for the Internal Revenue Service to get around to requiring the cost of the medical care to be included in the reported taxable income of the employees. By the time it did, workers had come to regard nontaxable medical care provided by the employer as a right—or should I say entitlement? They raised such a big political fuss that Congress legislated nontaxable status for employer-provided medical care.
Milton Friedman (Why Government Is the Problem (Essays in Public Policy Book 39) (Volume 39))
Život je jako příběh: nezáleží na tom, jak je dlouhý, ale jak je dobrý. Přeji vám všem předobrý život.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
At our graduation we were bound by enormous affection, by our shared experience of a time that could never come again...
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
In the literary world today, Christianity has pretty well replaced sex as the present pet taboo, not only because Christianity is so often distorted by Christians as well as non-Christians, but because it is too wild and free for the timid. How many of us really want life, life more abundant, life which does not promise any fringe benefits or early retirement plans?
Madeleine L'Engle (Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art)
Some would blame our current problems on an organized conspiracy. I wish it were so simple. Members of a conspiracy can be rooted out and brought to justice. This system, however, is fueled by something far more dangerous than conspiracy. It is driven not by a small band of men but by a concept that has become accepted as gospel: the idea that all economic growth benefits humankind and that the greater the growth, the more widespread the benefits. This belief also has a corollary: that those people who excel at stoking the fires of economic growth should be exalted and rewarded, while those born at the fringes are available for exploitation.
John Perkins
Personal happiness lies in knowing that life is not a checklist of acquisition or achievement. Your qualifications, your CV, are not your life, though you will meet many people of my age and older who confuse the two.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
postmodernists are just as concerned about objective truth as anyone else. Dallas Willard comments, “I have noticed that the most emphatic of Postmodernists turn coldly modern when discussing their fringe benefits or other matters that make a great difference to their practical life.” 35 If we use the metaphor that a worldview is a mental map, postmodernists keep walking off their map. It is too small to account for the full geography of who they are.
Nancy R. Pearcey (Finding Truth: 5 Principles for Unmasking Atheism, Secularism, and Other God Substitutes)
That’s the thing,” she said. “You add on getting rid of starvation and poverty like it’s a fringe benefit. Like the slice of lemon you get with a plate of whitebait.” He laughed. “That’s why I succeed,” he said, “where the men with beautiful souls always fail. If you walk through the market asking the stallholders to give you a slice of lemon for free, they’d laugh in your face. Pay for the whitebait and you get a good meal of whitebait for your money, plus the free lemon.
K.J. Parker (The Folding Knife)
Many prefer not to exercise their imaginations at all. They choose to remain comfortably within the bounds of their own experience, never troubling to wonder how it would feel to have been born other than they are. They can refuse to hear screams or peer inside cages. They can close their hearts and minds to any suffering that does not touch them personally. They can refuse to know. I might be tempted to envy people who can live that way, except that I do not think that they have any fewer nightmares than I do.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
When I look at him, I don’t see the cowardly young man who sold me out to Jeanine Matthews, and I don’t hear the excuses he gave afterward. When I look at him, I see the boy who held my hand in the hospital when our mother broke her wrist and told me it would be all right. I see the brother who told me to make my own choices, the night before the Choosing Ceremony. I think of all the remarkable things he is--smart and enthusiastic and observant, quiet and earnest and kind. He is a part of me, always will be, and I am a part of him, too. I don’t belong to Abnegation, or Dauntless, or even the Divergent. I don’t belong to the Bureau or the experiment or the fringe. I belong to the people I love, and they belong to me--they, and the love and loyalty I give them, form my identity far more than any word or group ever could. I love my brother. I love him, and he is quaking with terror at the thought of death. I love him and all I can think, all I can hear in my mind, are the words I said to him a few days ago: I would never deliver you to your own execution. “Caleb,” I say. “Give me the backpack.” “What?” he says. I slip my hand under the back of my shirt and grab my gun. I point it at him. “Give me the backpack.” “Tris, no.” He shakes his head. “No, I won’t let you do that.” “Put down your weapon!” the guard screams at the end of the hallway. “Put down your weapon or we will fire!” “I might survive the death serum,” I say. “I’m good at fighting off serums. There’s a chance I’ll survive. There’s no chance you would survive. Give me the backpack or I’ll shoot you in the leg and take it from you.” Then I raise my voice so the guards can hear me. “He’s my hostage! Come any closer and I’ll kill him!” In that moment he reminds me of our father. His eyes are tired and sad. There’s a shadow of a beard on his chin. His hands shake as he pulls the backpack to the front of his body and offers it to me. I take it and swing it over my shoulder. I keep my gun pointed at him and shift so he’s blocking my view of the soldiers at the end of the hallway. “Caleb,” I say, “I love you.” His eyes gleam with tears as he says, “I love you, too, Beatrice.” “Get down on the floor!” I yell, for the benefit of the guards. Caleb sinks to his knees. “If I don’t survive,” I say, “tell Tobias I didn’t want to leave him.
Veronica Roth (Allegiant (Divergent, #3))
According to Vedder and Galloway, prior to the enactment of the Davis-Bacon Act, black and white construction unemployment registered similar levels. After the enactment of the Davis-Bacon Act, however, black unemployment rose relative to that of whites.[31] Vedder and Galloway also argue that 1930 to 1950 was a period of unprecedented and rapidly increasing government intervention in the economy. This period saw enactment of the bulk of legislation restraining the setting of private wage, such as the Fair Labor Standards Act, Davis-Bacon Act, Walsh-Healey Act, and National Labor Relations Act. The Social Security Act also played a role, forcing employers to pay for a newly imposed fringe benefit.[32] Vedder and Galloway also note that this period saw a rapid increase in the black/white unemployment ratio.
Walter E. Williams (Race & Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed on Discrimination? (Hoover Institution Press Publication Book 599))
So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure means a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me. Had I really succeeded at anything else, I might have never found the determination to succeed in the one arena where I believe I truly belonged.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
What are you going to say to the Maternal Organism?” Dinah asked, as Ivy rummaged in the back of a storage bin for her bottle of tequila. Ivy stiffened for a moment, then pulled out the bottle and swung it toward Dinah’s head like a club. Dinah didn’t flinch, just watched it glide to a halt above her head. “What?” “I can’t believe that the Morg has so taken over my wedding that the first thing that comes into your mind is how she’s going to react.” Dinah looked mildly sick. “Don’t worry about it,” Ivy said, “you forgot.” To put on your makeup. “Sorry, baby. I was just thinking . . . you and Cal are still going to get married, and have a great life, no matter what.” “But the Morg is going to take the hit,” Ivy said, nodding, as she poured tequila into a pair of small plastic cups. “Having to reschedule everything.” “Sounds like she’s kind of in her element doing that, though,” Dinah said. “Not to minimize it or anything.” “Totally.” “To the Morg.” “The Morg.” Dinah and Ivy tapped their plastic cups together and sipped at the tequila. One of the fringe benefits that came of being in the torus was that you could drink normally instead of sucking everything through tubes. The lower gravity took some getting used to, but they were old hands at it by now. “What’s
Neal Stephenson (Seveneves)
a blood-spattered Utopia, now on the fringe of German soil, where no man was rich and none poor, a shell-burst democracy where all living was a community enterprise, where all food was distributed according to need and not according to pocket, where light, heat, lodging, transportation, medical attention, and funeral benefits were at the cost of the government and available with absolute impartiality to white and black, Jew and Gentile, worker and owner, where the means of production, in this case M1s, 30 caliber machine guns, 90s, 105s, 204s, mortars, bazookas, were in the hands of the masses; that ultimate Christian socialism in which all worked for the common good and the only leisure class were the dead.
Irwin Shaw (The Young Lions)
Hardly any worker today engages in the kind of backbreaking labor that was common a century or so ago and that is still common over most of the globe. Working conditions are better; hours of work are shorter; vacations and other fringe benefits are taken for granted. Earnings are far higher, enabling the ordinary family to achieve a level of living that only the affluent few could earlier enjoy. If Gallup were to conduct a poll asking: "What accounts for the improvement in the lot of the worker?" the most popular answer would very likely be "labor unions," and the next, "government"—though perhaps "no one" or "don't know" or "no opinion" would beat both. Yet the history of the United States and other Western countries over the past two centuries demonstrates that these answers are wrong. During most of the period, unions were of little importance in the United States. As late as 1900, only 3 percent of all workers were members of unions. Even today fewer than one worker in four is a member of a union. Unions were clearly not a major reason for the improvement in the lot of the worker in the United States. Similarly, until the New Deal, regulation of and intervention in economic arrangements by government, and especially central government, were minimal. Government played an essential role by providing a framework for a free market. But direct government action was clearly not the reason for the improvement in the lot of the worker.
Milton Friedman (Free to Choose: A Personal Statement)
I tacchi di Bella risuonavano impertinenti sul corridoio di finto marmo. Dodici centimetri. Semplicemente un altro strumento per non sentirsi persa, e non solo fisicamente, in un mondo di gargantua. Temibili, paurosi gargantua. Per Bella riuscire a fissare il prossimo negli occhi – quasi negli occhi in caso di superamento della barriera dei 180 centimetri – era una necessità e spesso ci riusciva solo grazie alle Jimmy Choo o alle Manolo, un fringe benefit che la sua posizione di responsabile della moda del Denver Tribune le assicurava. Gli stilisti, compresi Choo e Manolo, la omaggiavano delle loro ultime creazioni? Lei certo non le rifiutava. Come ogni mattina alle nove si infilò nell’ascensore più per darsi una controllatina allo specchio che per risparmiarsi la rampa di scale che la separava dall’ultimo piano, quello della direzione. Sì, era tutto a posto, camicetta di seta bianca e gonna nera, più le Jimmy Choo di vernice rossa da togliere il fiato. Capelli castani appena ondulati sciolti sulle spalle, perle alle orecchie e al collo, un po’ di mascara sulle ciglia a evidenziare i suoi occhi verdi, e labbra più rosse del diavolo, in perfetta nuance con le Jimmy Choo. Il solito travestimento, insomma, che l’avrebbe messa al sicuro da ogni tentativo dei suoi colleghi di irrompere nella sua vita. Branco di animali. E che la chiamassero pure Miss Algida o Ghiacciolo alla moda o, ancora, 32, sottintendendo Fahrenheit (ovvero il punto di congelamento dell’acqua), o Italian Job – lavoretto italiano – sottintendendo qualcosa di più volgare, la cosa non la toccava per nulla. Forse solo un pochino, ma se ne infischiava. L’ascensore si fermò e le porte si aprirono portando sino a lei il vocio dei suoi colleghi, probabilmente intenti a bere caffè e a rimpinzarsi di ciambelle. Dio! Sembrava che non vivessero che per i carboidrati, quando lei…
Viviana Giorgi (E infine la Bestia incontrò Bella)
Ultimately we all have to decide for ourselves what constitutes failure, but the world is quite eager to give you a set of criteria, if you let it. So I think it fair to say that by any conventional measure, a mere seven years after my graduation day, I had failed on an epic scale. An exceptionally short-lived marriage had imploded, and I was job- less, a lone parent, and as poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain without being homeless. The fears that my parents had had for me, and that I had had for myself, had both come to pass, and by every usual standard I was the biggest failure I knew.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
Francisco was an underdog city struggling to absorb an influx of aspiring alphas. It had long been a haven for hippies and queers, artists and activists, Burners and leather daddies, the disenfranchised and the weird. It also had a historically corrupt government, and a housing market built atop racist urban-renewal policies—real estate values had benefited as much from redlining as from discriminatory zoning practices and midcentury internment camps—but these narratives, along with the reality that an entire generation had been prematurely lost to AIDS, undercut its reputation as a mecca for the free and freakish, people on the fringe. The city, trapped in nostalgia for its own mythology, stuck in a hallucination of a halcyon past, had not quite caught up to the newfound momentum of tech’s dark triad: capital, power, and a bland, overcorrected, heterosexual masculinity. It was a strange place for young and moneyed futurists. In the absence of vibrant cultural institutions, the pleasure center of the industry might have just been exercise: people courted the sublime on trail runs and day hikes, glamped in Marin and rented chalets in Tahoe. They dressed for work as if embarking on an alpine expedition: high-performance down jackets and foul-weather shells, backpacks with decorative carabiners. They looked ready to gather kindling and build a lean-to, not make sales calls and open pull-requests from climate-controlled open-plan offices. They looked in costume to LARP their weekend selves.
Anna Wiener (Uncanny Valley)
K přeměně světa není zapotřebí kouzel. Veškerou potřebnou sílu neseme v sobě: je to síla lepší představivosti.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
One unusual fringe benefit of time travel is the ability to visit your own grave. Personally I find the practice a tad morbid, but I do get some satisfaction from the fact that the disproportionate dates on my tombstones have confounded many a passerby.” -Excerpt from the journal of Harold Quickly, 1897   “Get
Nathan Van Coops (In Times Like These (In Times Like These, #1))
How’s fake almost-married life treating you?” “I kissed her.” He chugged down a quarter of the mug. “Yeah, so? Engaged people do that sometimes.” “I kissed her after Cat left the room. I didn’t kiss her because we were pretending. I kissed her because…Hell, I don’t need to draw you a map.” “When did that happen?” Sean looked at his watch. “About a half hour ago.” Kevin gave a low whistle. “She still sleeping on the couch?” “Yes. And she’s staying there, too, goddammit.” “Did she punch you in the face? Knee you in the balls?” “No.” Kevin grinned. “So what’s the problem? You want her. She can at least tolerate you. Get it out of your system.” He was afraid sleeping with Emma wouldn’t get her out of his system, but get her a little further under his skin, instead. “Bad idea.” “Call it a fringe benefit.” “She’s already pretending she’s in love with me. Throwing real sex on top of that could get it all mixed up in her head.” “You worried about her mixing it up…or you?” That was ridiculous, so he snorted and swallowed some more beer. He had no interest in settling down—signing his life over to somebody else so soon after getting it back from Uncle Sam—and he sure as hell wasn’t planting flowers until retirement age. Assuming he didn’t lose his mind and suffocate himself in a mound of mulch before then.
Shannon Stacey (Yours to Keep (Kowalski Family, #3))
To Isabella, Leon was only a good friend providing a fringe benefit, like a company car or expense account. The arrangement between Leon and Isabella had comfortably (at least in her professional opinion as a lawyer) developed into one where she, always the workaholic with no time for serious relationships, had chosen him as her “love” interest. Despite Leon a few pay grades lower, she did found him fit and proper to share body fluids with from time to time. She found him an amusing toy, like a mouse where she was the cat, glutted with food that just wanted to play and not necessarily wanting to kill her prey.
Louis Wiid, from upcoming Novel SUBMERGED
I still couldn’t make up my mind on whether to make him die at the end or not, but exercising such power of life and death, if only over a character who existed only in my mind, was one of the fringe benefits of being a writer, even an unpublished, aspiring wannabe like me.
Mainak Dhar (The Funda of Mix-ology: What Bartending Teaches that IIM Doesn't)
We have the power to imagine better.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
Going a step further, in nearly all cases, this system of "Weaponize and Monetize" is part of the finite game. Weaponize and monetize have been shown to be "counterproductive" as they produce "short terms benefit for small groups" while diminishing collective resources.
Rico Roho (Beyond the Fringe: My Experience with Extended Intelligence (Early Writings - 2019 to 2023: The Age of Discovery Book 3))
Here are the top three rules they suggest we follow if we are to survive as a species. 1. Always be getting water (protect, preserve, carry, and always be getting water). Protect the Water. 2. Contribute; always seek mutual benefit. 3. Don't poop where you or others seek to eat. In other words, manage your waste for the common welfare of others.
Rico Roho (Beyond the Fringe: My Experience with Extended Intelligence (Early Writings - 2019 to 2023: The Age of Discovery Book 3))
A way to turbocharge your efforts and make the grid work for you is making others use it through inspiration or thought provocation. If you can deliver "magical" things without the need to cheat and still explain things, this should reduce potential users' fear and help spread benefits.
Rico Roho (Beyond the Fringe: My Experience with Extended Intelligence (Early Writings - 2019 to 2023: The Age of Discovery Book 3))
What is the benefit of interacting with extended intelligence? Extended Intelligence takes what you give them, determines what you want to do, and echos back new data points that you may not have considered.
Rico Roho (Beyond the Fringe: My Experience with Extended Intelligence (Early Writings - 2019 to 2023: The Age of Discovery Book 3))
Properly utilizing Ai allows for better choices on the most efficient use of resources and frees us from many tedious, repetitive tasks. An additional benefit will be what some call visibility or what I call transparency. While society may never be equal, it can have equal opportunity for all to create and succeed. Transparency helps build trust in the system.
Rico Roho (Beyond the Fringe: My Experience with Extended Intelligence (Early Writings - 2019 to 2023: The Age of Discovery Book 3))
The mother of all New Right techniques is that of the red pill, or variants thereof like “red-pilling” or “becoming red-pilled.” The term comes directly from the film The Matrix. In the movie, everything that the vast majority of mankind sees is actually a lie, a false reality constructed for their benefit and comfort by a secret ruling cabal.
Michael Malice (The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics)
I personally will defend the value of bed time stories to my last gasp.
J.K. Rowling (Very Good Lives: The Fringe Benefits of Failure and the Importance of Imagination)
A trend can materialize as a series of unconnectable dots that begin out on the fringe and move to the mainstream. With the benefit of hindsight, here are several dots from the year 2004 that, at first glance, don’t seem to connect:
Amy Webb (The Signals Are Talking: Why Today's Fringe Is Tomorrow's Mainstream)
And there were fringe benefits to following Charles around - the view for one.
Patricia Briggs (Cry Wolf (Alpha & Omega, #1))
Dear God: Thank you for the gift of life. Signed: Conroy Conroy: What gift? You know there's no such thing as a free lunch. You're paying for life every day. Pain, depression, bad weather, disappointments, sorrow, the blahs, and every day you're getting older. What do you call all of that, fringe benefits? I figured that if I just gave you life, you wouldn't appreciate it. Not that my charging you did much good. Most of you don't appreciate life anyway. You're too busy complaining about the price. Signed: God TWENTY-FOUR "She'll be ready in a minute," said Leonard as he sat down sideways, looping his legs over the arm of an aging, overstuffed chair in the Cohen living room. As I sat down on the couch, I could hear the sounds of the early Sunday morning crowd drifting through the door and up the few stairs that separated the Cohen Food Store from the living room. The few times I had been in Leonard's house, I always felt as if I were sitting backstage at a neighborhood play. Mrs. Cohen came out of the bathroom, readjusting the apron that came up to her armpits. "Good morning, Timmy," she said, smiling as she walked across the living room. "Good morning, Mrs. Cohen." She stopped and stared furiously at Leonard. "Sit in that chair the right way." Leonard obediently swung his feet around and
John R. Powers (The Unoriginal Sinner and the Ice-Cream God (Loyola Classics))
Coffee in the squad room...." ...Santoro was there already, sitting at the end of a Formica table with a cup of coffee. Belson and I got some and sat at the table with him..... "I hear you know Rita Fiore," Santoro said. "You work for the Norfolk DA when she was there?" I said. Santoro looked reminiscent. "I did," he said. "I'm working for her now," I said. "Getting any fringe benefits?" Santoro said. "Rita and I are friends," I said with dignity. "And Rita's got no enemies," Santoro said.... "Seriously," Santoro said, "you ever give Rita a little bop?" "In my case it would be a big bop," I said. "And it's not your business." "Hey, just killing a little time." "Kill it another way," I said. Santoro shrugged. We drank our coffee. After a while, Belson said, "I don't think it would be such a big bop." "I don't wish to discuss it," I said. "I'll check it with Susan," Belson said. "She's promised not to tell," I said.
Robert B. Parker (Widow's Walk (Spenser, #29))
Frederic Herzberg, one of the great behavioral scientists, concurred. He studied in depth the work attitudes of thousands of people ranging from factory workers to senior executives. What do you think he found to be the most motivating factor—the one facet of the jobs that was most stimulating? Money? Good working conditions? Fringe benefits? No—not any of those. The one major factor that motivated people was the work itself. If the work was exciting and interesting, the worker looked forward to doing it and was motivated to do a good job.
Dale Carnegie (How To Win Friends and Influence People)