Galloway Quotes

A weapon does not decide whether or not to kill. A weapon is a manifestation of a decision that has already been made.

When she bought the cats her mother asked her straight out if they were 'baby substitutes'. 'No,' Ruth had answered, straight-faced. 'They're kittens. If I had a baby it would be a cat substitute.

You would think there's a natural limit to tears: only so much the body can give at one sitting before it runs dry.

You don't choose what to believe. Belief chooses you.

Don’t follow your passion, follow your talent.

Do you know the difference between an optimist and a pessimist? A pessimist says ‘Oh dear, things can’t possibly get any worse.’ And an optimist says, ‘Don’t be so sad. Things can always get worse.

I know absolutely nothing about where I'm going. I'm fine with that. I'm happy about it. Before, I had nothing. I had no life, no friends, and no family really, and I didn't really care. I had nothing, and nothing to lose, and then I knew loss. What I cared about was gone; it was all lost. Now I have everything to gain; everything is a clean slate. It's all blank pages waiting to be written on. It's all about going forward. It's all about uncertainty and possibilities.

It's a rare gift to understand that your life is wondrous, and that it won't last forever.

This is how....life happens. One small thing at a time. A series of inconsequential junctions, any or none of which can lead to salvation or disaster. There are no grand moments where a person does or does not perform the act that defines their humanity. There are only moments that appear, briefly, to be this way.

Needing people yet being afraid of them is wearing me out.

No matter how often I think I can't stand it anymore, I always do. There is no alternative. I don't fall, I don't foam at the mouth, faint, collapse or die. It's the same for all of us. You can't get out of the inside of your own head. Something keeps you going. Something always does.

She felt an enveloping happiness to be alive, a joy made stronger by the certainty that someday it would all come to an end. Afterward she felt a little foolish, and never spoke to anyone about it. Now, however, she knows she wasn't being foolish. She realizes that for no particular reason she stumbled into the core of what it is to be human. It's a rare gift to under stand that you life is wondrous, and that it won't last forever.

You know how thick I am. I don't even eat yoghurt because it's got culture in it.

If this city is to die, it won't be because of the men on the hills, it will be because of the people in the valley. When they're content to live with death, to become what the men on the hills want them to be, then Sarajevo will die.

No matter how dark the room gets I can always see. It looks emptier when I put the lights on so I don't do it if I can help it. Brightness disagrees with me: it hurts my eyes, wastes electricity and encourages moths, all sorts of things. I sit in the dark for a number of reasons.

People who received a great deal of attention for their looks at a young age are more likely to opt for cosmetic procedures when older. It’s the same in business.

The fingers on his flesh told him he was loved, that he had always been loved, and that the world was a place where above all else things that were good would find a way to burrow into you.

The choices she's made have left her without choice.

Because civilization isn't a thing that you build and then there it is, you have it forever. It needs to be built constantly, recreated daily. It vanishes far more quickly than he ever would have thought possible. And if he wishes to live, he must do what he can to prevent the world he wants to live in from fading away. As long as there's war, life is a preventative measure.

Maybe humans need animals to help them understand the world. Certainly it’s hard to see what else cats do for humans, aside from looking cute and killing the odd mouse.

Do they hate the idea of her, because she's different from them, and that in this difference there might be some sort of inferiority or superiority that is hers or theirs, that in the end threatens the potential happiness of everyone?

one man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter

It's asking for trouble to listen to music alone.

Libraries are the cathedrals of the modern age. All that knowledge, available for anyone to use. It’s quite a subversive thought.

Failure and invention are inseparable twins. To invent you have to experiment, and if you know in advance that it’s going to work, it’s not an experiment.

teach 120 kids on Tuesday nights in my Brand Strategy course. That’s $720,000, or $60,000 per class, in tuition payments, a lot of it financed with debt. I’m good at what I do, but walking in each night, I remind myself we (NYU) are charging kids $500/minute for me and a projector. This. Is. Fucking. Ridiculous.

The opportunity to die was everywhere, and it just wasn't surprising when that opportunity became an event.

There is no way to tell which version of a lie is the truth.

Expect that a certain amount of failure is out of your control, and recognize you may need to endure it or move on.

He knows the sniper will fire again, but he isn't afraid. At this moment fear doesn't exist. There's no such thing as bravery. There are no heroes, no villains, no cowards. There's what he can do, and what he can't. There's right and wrong and nothing else. The world is binary. Shading will come later.

The phone is an instrument of intrusion into order. It is a threat to control. Just when you think you are alone and safe, the call could come that changes your life. Or someone else's. It makes the same flat, mechanical noise for everyone and gives no clues what's waiting there on the other end of the line. You can never be too careful.

I just have to be smarter than my own mind.

Winter broke off, finally, a long ash crumbling at the end of a cigarette, burned out, weak and emptied.

Civilisation isn't a thing that you build and then there it is, you have it forever. It needs to be built constantly, recreated daily. It vanishes far more quickly than he even would have thought possible".

Her sentences were icebergs, with just the tip of her thought coming out of her mouth, and the rest kept up in her head, which I was starting to think was more and more beautiful the longer I looked at her.

It screamed downward, splitting air and sky without effort. A target expanded in size, brought into focus by time and velocity. There was a moment before impact that was the last instant of things as they were. Then the visible world exploded.

I’ve been a bad influence on you, Mr. Galloway. Less of the sarcasm, young man. Cynicism doesn’t suit you,” she said. “I hardly think sarcasm is the worst thing you’ve brought into my life,” he muttered.

May the winds ever be at your back, and the water that touches your lips be sweet.

Grey’s OK on a man,’ says Mary-Anne. ‘Silver fox and all that.’ Ruth notices that Frank doesn’t seem to mind this description. She also muses that there isn’t a female equivalent to ‘silver fox’. ‘Grey-haired old bat’ doesn’t cover it somehow.

A good friend of mine feels the same way about Italy and another adores a certain island in the Caribbean. For me it will always be Scotland - Galloway in particular. the musical lilt of a Lowland accent never fails to boost my spirits. I'm simply deliriously happy there.

It's funny how strangers can pass in front of you every day and all you see is a flat shadow, a vague outline, not noticing any of the details. They move in a gray crowd, always looking the same and acting the same, simple caricatures of who they really are, but once you get to know them, you notice the specific, tiniest things, you pay attention to the intricacies of their personalities, their habits and particular ways of walking and talking, the subtle changes in their appearance and dress.

I already read everything. I read poems and plays and novels and newspapers and comic books and magazines. I read tins in supermarkets and leaflets that come through the door, unsolicited mail. None of it lasts long and it doesn't give me answers. Reading too fast is not soothing.

The ultimate gift, in our digital age, is a CEO who has the storytelling talent to capture the imagination of the markets while surrounding themselves with people who can show incremental progress against that vision each day.

We were children of the 1950s and John Kennedy's young stalwarts of the early 1960s. He told the world that Americans would "pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship" in the defense of freedom. We were the down payment on that costly contract, but the man who signed it was not there when we fulfilled his promise. John Kennedy waited for us on a hill in Arlington National Cemetery, and in time we came by the thousands to fill those slopes with out white marble markers and to ask on the murmur of the wind if that was truely the future he had envisioned for us.

That's the point of it, to have those connections, as painful as they are, as much worry as they might cause; they give back in strength and comfort and joy, believe it or not, and the more connections you make, the happier you are, the more point there is to getting up and getting through the day.

The world is perfect there. Or maybe you’re perfect and the world is the same.

Some people think luxury is the opposite of poverty. It is not. It is the opposite of vulgarity,” said Coco Chanel.

There are those here who believe they are right simply because they oppose something that is evil.

I believe most people are especially repelled by attributes in other people that remind them of things they loathe about themselves.

... life is a series of tiny, unavoidable decisions.

By the time the last few notes fade, his hope will be restored, but each time he's force to resort to the Adagio it becomes harder, and he knows its effect is finite. There are only a certain number of Adagios left in him, and he will not recklessly spend this precious currency.

You need a break, a complete rest, recharge your batteries.' Recharge your batteries. What the hell does that mean? Nelson prides himself on not needing batteries. He's an old-fashioned, wind-up model.

But when you’re a kid, it isn’t chaos. It’s just a heartbeat. Your house isn’t floating through space, it sits on the ground. Once you get old enough you start to see that color is just paint and doors are just wood. Then, at some point, that feeling of home vanishes entirely. And… that’s what I fear. That nothing will ever make me feel like I’m safe again. That once you leave home, you never get it back.

Matthew hereby declares that Katherine Galloway is retroactively responsible for all embarrassing and painful incidents that have occurred in his life to date. Including, but not limited to, that time he broke his own nose with a tennis racket in eighth grade. KATHERINE’S FAULT.

It seems like it’s all just remembering and forgetting. Things happen so fast, and then they’re gone before you notice them. Events ambush you from out of nowhere, blindside you, and then you have to spend the time afterward trying to remember or forget what the hell it all was to begin with. The more you think about it, the more the events crumble, crack, breakdown, or refuse to change at all. They’re either pieces of ice in your hand, changing shape and melting away until they’re nothing like what they were to begin with, or pieces of glass. Sharp and irritating, unchanging reminders of pain and unpleasantness - or happiness.

There are realms of life where the concepts of sense and nonsense do not apply.

She is a woman who needs someone to take care of her, but it isn't going to be me.

it seems impossible until it isn’t.

The past is dead. She, as an archaeologist, knows that better than most. But she knows too that it can be seductive.

Why is her first reaction to invitations always to think of a way of refusing them?

If one should say to you that the soul perishes like the body, answer that the flower withers but the seed remains.

love was a willingness to take the life you’ve built for yourself and tear it up for the other person.

You have your whole life ahead of you," my mother told me, "don't spend all your time in the past." It's good advice, I know it is, but the past has its own ideas. It can follow you around with a life of its own, casting a long shadow.

He's been asleep since the war began. He knows this now. In defending himself from death he lost his grip on life. He thinks of Emina, risking her life to deliver expired pills to someone she's never met. Of the young man who ran into the street to save her when she was shot. Of the cellist who plays for those killed in a mortar attack. He could run now, but he doesn't.

My mother is a big fan of precision, and tries her best to maintain it. Unfortunately, her own incompetence gets in the way. Dinner is served, except when a can won't open. That's the way she is: fine unless something goes wrong and that minor obstacle becomes a huge wall she can't scale. She becomes helpless whenever things don't go smoothly, or exactly as she imagined them.

I’m getting this all wrong. Clove, I’m sorry,” her dad – Tom - said. “Let me explain properly.“ He faltered. Jen patted his hand again. “Maybe it’s best if I just come right out with it. What do you know about Matthew Galloway and Katherine Finchley?

We are all glass soldiers.

It’s easier to fool people than to convince them they’ve been fooled.

There's a pleasure being mad that only the madman knows.

It’s a rare gift to understand that your life is wondrous, and that it won’t last forever.

Does the world really need another long essay on environmental archaeology and freshwater mollusks? Well, it's going to get one, whether it likes it or not.

We like to position education as the great leveler. But in fact it has become a caste system, a means of passing privilege on to the next generation.

She has got her figure back after having the baby, which is a shame—she was rather hoping to get someone else’s.

You want to cover more ground in less time than your peers. This is partially built on talent, but mostly on strategy and endurance

There’s a saying that when guns are outlawed, only the outlaws will have guns.

He stares at the cellist, and feels himself relax as the music seeps into him. He watches as the cellist's hair smoothes itself out, his beard disappears. A dirty tuxedo becomes clean, shoes polished bright as mirrors...The building behind the cellist repairs itself. The scars of bullets and shrapnel are covered by plaster and paint, and windows reassemble, clarify and sparkle as the sun reflects off glass. The cobblestones of the road set themselves straight. Around him people stand up taller, their faces put on weight and colour. Clothes gain lost thread, brighten, smooth out their wrinkles. Kenan watches as his city heals itself around him. The cellist continues to play...

There must come a point where so much has been turned to rubble that ruining a little more makes no difference. It’s possible that point has already been reached. Does a person work the same way?

I know you've all got it in for me," says Bob. "You fitted me up for one crime, why not pin every child murder in the last twenty years on me?" His voice rises hysterically. "That seems rather an extreme reaction," says Tim. "I just asked what you were doing yesterday afternoon.

luxury is irrational, which makes it the best business in the world. In 2016 Estée Lauder was worth more than the world’s largest communications firm, WPP.9 Richemont, owner of Cartier and Van Cleef & Arpels, was worth more than T-Mobile.10 LVMH commands more value than Goldman Sachs.

L’énigme à elle seule vaut presque tout. Parfois le mystère est bien plus amusant que le reste.

God isn't fooled by mercenary goodness I told myself and went back to manic smiling.

The road makes a noise all its own. It's a single note that stretches in all directions, low and nearly inaudible, only I could hear it loud and persistent...

Ruth isn’t going to be bossed about by a woman in tight trousers who thinks she’s Helen Mirren playing Jane Tennison. She

Do what you want with life, you don't get another one. Never apologize, never explain. Stay light, stay free. Jealousy kills; it kills whatever it touches.

The toughest bullshit to cut through, is one's own.

It is conventional wisdom that Steve Jobs put “a dent in the universe.” No, he didn’t. Steve Jobs, in my view, spat on the universe. People who get up every morning, get their kids dressed, get them to school, and have an irrational passion for their kids’ well-being, dent the universe. The world needs more homes with engaged parents, not a better fucking phone.

Every heartbeat a syllable for words I can’t speak, to explain what I want from him. What I want from myself. To know and be known, totally and completely. To be someone worth knowing.

Hideous, aren’t they?” His voice startles me, and I realize I must have been quiet for a while. I notice how his jaw tightens. I shake my head. “Not to me.” I can’t stop myself from reaching up, sliding my fingers down the four jagged scars above his brow. Finally, the single one that mars his cheek. “Your scars aren’t flaws, Galloway. They’re not imperfections. They’re stories written on your skin.” “Stories?” It sounds like he thinks the idea is silly. “Aye,” I say. “They tell the tale of how you survived. There’s no shame in that.

Arrow let the slow pulse of the vibrating strings flood into her. She felt the lament raise a lump in her throat, fought back tears. She inhaled sharp and fast. Her eyes watered, and the notes ascended the scale. The men on the hills, the men in the city, herself, none of them had the right to do the things they'd done. It had never happened. It could not have happened. But she knew these notes. They had become a part of her. They told her that everything had happened exactly as she knew it had, and that nothing could be done about it. No grief or rage or noble act could undo it. But it could all have been stopped. It was possible. The men on the hills didn't have to be murderers. Then men in the city didn't have to lower themselves to fight their attackers. She didn't have to be filled with hatred. The music demanded that she remember this, that she know to a certainity that the world still held the capacity for goodness. The notes were proof of that.

The sniper puts the cellist in his sights. Arrow is about to send a bullet into him, but stops. His finger isn't on the trigger...His hand isn't even in the vicinity of the trigger...His head leans back slightly, and she sees that his eyes are closed, that he is no longer looking through his scope. She knows what he's doing. It's very clear to her, unmistakable. He's listening to the music. And then Arrow knows why he didn't fire yesterday...She is at once, sure of two things. The first is that she does not want to kill this man, and the second is that she must. Time is running out. There's no reason not to kill him. A sniper of his ability has wihtout doubt killed dozens, if not hundreds. Not just soldiers. Women crossing streets. Children in playgrounds. Old men in water lines. She knows this to a certainity. Yet she doesn't want to pull her trigger. All because she can see that he doesn't want to pull his...The final notes of the cellist's melody reach him, and he smiles.

Balance when establishing your career, in my view, is largely a myth. “Struggle porn” will tell you that you must be miserable before you can be successful. This isn’t true: you can experience a lot of reward along the way to success. But if balance is your priority in your youth, then you need to accept that, unless you are a genius, you may not reach the upper rungs of economic security.

The men on the hills told her that she hated them, and they did everything they could to make it true. She did not fight very hard. It was an easy thing to do. She wonders whether it would have been possible to behave any differently. She hopes it is. She hopes that, somewhere in the city, there are people who are resisting the temptation to turn these men into devils, to say that all men are like them, to oppose their very existence the way they always said the people of Sarajevo did.

I hate the calendar, which is both a circle and a straight line, a wheel and an arrow, grinding each anniversary, each day a reminder of my failures, my lost plans, unfulfilled objectives and wishes, the days aren't taken off the calendar, subtracted one by one, but added, another small stone accumulated, another foot moved ahead, the arrow flying forward instead of falling back to earth, when all I want is a complete stop.

Nelson nods again. ‘It’s every parent’s worst nightmare. The worst, the very worst. When you have children, suddenly the world seems such a terrifying place. Every stick and stone, every car, every animal, Christ, every person, is suddenly a terrible threat. You realise you’d do anything, anything, to keep them safe: steal, lie, kill, you name it. But sometimes there just isn’t anything you can do. And that’s the hardest thing.

The label of "marathoner" has, from the beginning, been awarded to those who went the distance under their own power, whether they ran, walked, crawled or tiptoed. When you cross that finish line, you've entered an elite group. About one-tenth of one percent of the population has done it. Don't let anyone take that great achievement away from you.

The whole point is that time passes. That things fade. He is already hard to remember. Look, I used to cry because I thought I'd forget. Then I knew that was ridiculous and cried because I remembered. But the truth is that one is the same as the other. Remembering and forgetting are the same bloody thing. He is not alive any more. That's all there is to know. There is no purpose to any of it. The point is there is no point.

She’s unmarried but, as she confided early on to Judy, ‘not short of offers’. Nelson often thinks that Jo is not nearly as attractive as she thinks she is but, as with all these things, her insane self-belief rubs off on others, and after a week King’s Lynn police were treating her as if she were Helen of Troy. Her technique is divide and rule.

Don’t follow your passion, follow your talent. Determine what you are good at (early), and commit to becoming great at it. You don't have to love it, just don't hate it. If practice takes you from good to great, the recognition and compensation you will command will make you start to love it. And, ultimately, you will be able to shape your career and your specialty to focus on the aspects you enjoy the most. And if not—make good money and then go follow your passion. No kid dreams of being a tax accountant. However, the best tax accountants on the planet fly first class and marry people better looking than themselves—both things they are likely to be passionate about.

As she rounded a corner one of her favourite songs came on the radio, and sunlight filtered through the trees the way it does with lace curtains, reminding her of her grandmother, and tears began to slide down her cheeks. Not for her grandmother, who was then still very much among the living, but because she felt an enveloping happiness to be alive, a joy made stronger by the certainty that someday it would all come to an end. It overwhelmed her, made her pull the car to the side of the road. Afterwards she felt a little foolish, and never spoke to anyone about it. Now, however, she knows she wasn’t being foolish. She realizes that for no particular reason she stumbled into the core of what it is to be human. It’s a rare gift to understand that your life is wondrous, and that it won’t last forever.

No one has been able to aggregate more intention data on what consumers like than Google. Google not only sees you coming, but sees where you’re going. When homicide investigators arrive at a crime scene and there is a suspect—almost always the spouse—they check the suspect’s search history for suspicious Google queries (like “how to poison your husband”). I suspect we’re going to find that U.S. agencies have been mining Google to understand the intentions of more than some shopper thinking about detergent, but cells looking for fertilizer to build bombs. Google controls a massive amount of behavioral data. However, the individual identities of users have to be anonymized and, to the best of our knowledge, grouped. People are not comfortable with their name and picture next to a list of all the things they have typed into the Google query box. And for good reasons. Take a moment to imagine your picture and your name above everything you have typed into that Google search box. You’ve no doubt typed in some crazy shit that you would rather other people not know. So, Google has to aggregate this data, and can only say that people of this age or people of this cohort, on average, type in these sorts of things into their Google search box. Google still has a massive amount of data it can connect, if not to specific identities, to specific groups.