Kevin Day Quotes

Perhaps one day the man in the black jacket will think about this too: why he only wondered if it was Kevin or Amat who was telling the truth. Why Maya’s word wasn’t enough.

Now that number was gone, covered up by the jet-black image of a chess piece. Neil's knowledge of chess was hazy at best, but he knew for sure that wasn't a king. "You did it," Neil said, too stunned to manage anything else. "Let Riko be King," Kevin said, with the exaggerated enunciation of the thoroughly sloshed. "Most coveted, most protected. He'll sacrifice every piece he has to protect his throne. Whatever. Me?" Kevin gestured again, meaning to indicate himself but too drunk to get his hand higher than his waist. "I'm going to be the deadliest piece on the board." "Queen," Andrew said somewhere behind Neil.

It's far less important to me to be liked these days than to be understood.

Today was a difficult day. Tomorrow will be better

Sometimes you imagine that everything could have been different for you, that if only you had gone right one day when you chose to go left, you would be living a life you could never have anticipated. But at other times you think there was no other way forward--that you were always bound to end up exactly where you have.

Remember: It costs nothing to encourage an artist, and the potential benefits are staggering. A pat on the back to an artist now could one day result in your favorite film, or the cartoon you love to get stoned watching, or the song that saves your life. Discourage an artist, you get absolutely nothing in return, ever.

Wisdom eludes me yet, but foolishness I captured long ago and to this day it is my constant companion, though many people consider me wise.

Now it seemed he'd been wrong all along; Kevin hadn't escaped either. No matter what they did or who they became, maybe they never would.

Funny how the nature of a normal day is the first memory to fade.

Jean turned on Kevin and spoke in quick, furious French. "What the hell is this?" "His antagonism is a personality flaw we're learning to live with," Kevin said.

It's not easy-living in a void, living and dying inside your head…wanting what you want so much that you'd give everything else to get it- but the time still passes, the days go on…and as long as there's still a tomorrow, there's always a chance.

We're all going to die," Kevin said at last.

The days passed, as they do, and life went on.

I hate to point out the obvious, but here's this tiny bird that's been trying to get through a huge bulletproof glass wall. A totally impossible situation. You tell me it's been here every day pecking away persistently for ten minutes. Well, today the glass wall came down.

Kevin didn't care who he offended and kept his eyes on Dan. "If you'll actually get the ball to us, we can do something with it." Matt looked at Andrew. "One of these days you have to let me hit him." Andrew

Neil watched Kevin wilt beneath the weight of his brother’s – no, owner’s – fury and kissed his survival instincts goodbye. He grabbed Riko’s shirt and hauled him back.

Faith is not like a raincoat, only to be worn on drizzly days.

Kevin was more demanding of himself than he was of anyone around him. He set his standards impossibly high and tried for them with everything he had, and he didn't understand why others wouldn't do the same.

I'm still living it now, every day, living it out in my mind - following the ups and downs, walking the pathways, reliving the moments of our Moonlight World... It's a day that never dies.

Who's to blame when your kid goes nuts? Is it a blessing to not have children? 'We Need to Talk About Kevin' became a hit cult book for women without offspring who were finally able to admit they didn't want to give birth. They felt complete, thank you very much, and lived in silent resentment for years at other women's pious, unwanted sympathy toward them for not having babies. With even gay couples having children these days, aren't happy heterosexual women who don't want to have kids the most ostracized of us all? To me they are beautiful feminists. If you're not sure you could love your children, please don't have them, because they might grow up and kill us.

Fearlessness is better than a faint-heart for any man who puts his nose out of doors. The length of my life and the day of my death were fated long ago.

Anyone who thinks that homophobia doesn't exist in this day and age has never been the gay boy in a boys' locker room

I am in flight from my story every day, and it dogs me like a faithful stray.

Everyone claims to be a billionaire these days. But you’re not really a billionaire until you spend your billions. —OVERHEARD AT THE HONG KONG JOCKEY CLUB

Always remember that love, much like our faith in God, is the kite we must fly, even on a windless day.

Tip for the day: never eat a bible when you're starving to death.

You were ambitious - for your life, what it was like when you woke up in the morning, and not for some attainment. Like most people who did not answer a particular calling from an early age, you placed work beside yourself; any occupation would fill up your day but not your heart. I liked that about you. I liked it enormously.

Kevin," Neil said, and waited for Kevin to finally look at him. "Figure out what you want more than anything, what it would kill you to lose. That's what's at stake if you let Riko win. Calculate the cost of your fear. If it's too much, you need to fight. Wouldn't you rather die trying than never try at all?" "It's death either way," Kevin pointed out. "Die free or die a failure," Neil said. "The choice is yours

We became acquainted with starry skies the girls had gazed at while camping years before, and the boredom of summers traipsing from back yard to front to back again, and even a certain indefinable smell that arose from toilets on rainy nights, which the girls called "sewery." We knew what it felt like to see a boy with his shirt off, and why it made Lux write the name Kevin in purple Magic Marker all over her three-ring binder and even on her bras and panties, and we understood her rage coming home one day to find that Mrs. Lisbon had soaked her things in Clorox, bleaching all the "Kevins" out. We knew the pain of winter wind rushing up your skirt, and the ache of keeping your knees together in class, and how drab and infuriating it was to jump rope while the boys played baseball. We could never understand why the girls cared so much about being mature, or why they felt compelled to compliment each other, but sometimes, after one of us had read a long portion of the diary out loud, we had to fight back the urge to hug one another or to tell each other how pretty we were. We felt the imprisonment of being a girl, the way it made your mind active and dreamy, and how you ended up knowing which colors went together. We knew that the girls were our twins, that we all existed in space like animals with identical skins, and that they knew everything about us though we couldn't fathom them at all. We knew, finally, that the girls were really women in disguise, that they understood love and even death, and that our job was merely to create the noise that seemed to fascinate them.

...I long ago gave up defending humanity. It's beyond me on most days to defend myself.

Growing up happens in a heartbeat. Once day you're in diapers, the next day you're gone. But the memories of childhood stay with you for the long haul. I remember a place, a town, a house, like a lot of houses. A yard like a lot of other yards. On a street like a lot of other streets. And the thing is, after all these years, I still look back... with wonder. -Kevin from the finale of the Wonder Years

That is a noble idea, though I think it far to generous," Jupiter said. "Once a decade should be sufficient." "I would rather be too generous than not in such cases." "As you wish." [One day, Atticus was amazed to discover that when Jupiter said, "As you wish," what he really meant was "I love you."]

One day I want you to look up 'insensitivity' in the dictionary," Matt said, annoyed. "I'm sure it'll do your ego wonders to see your picture printed there beside it.

He could be shorter than Kevin Hart and look like Flavor Flav.

I now know pain is part of any journey- that this is the opposite of grief, but grief the only way I know to describe waiting and waiting without knowing, hoping one day joy will arrive.

The Grid. A digital frontier. I tried to picture clusters of information as they moved through the computer. What did they look like? Ships, motorcycles? Were the circuits like freeways? I kept dreaming of a world I thought I'd never see. And then, one day I got in...

A pat on the back to an artist now could one day result in your favorite film, or the cartoon you loved to get stoned watching, or the song that saves your life. Discourage an artist, you get absolutely nothing in return, ever.

You want to fall, that's all. You think it can't go on like that. It's as if your life is a perch on the edge of a cliff and going forward seems impossible, not for a lack of will, but a lack of space. The possibility of another day stands in defiance of the laws of physics. And you can't go back. So you want to fall, let go, give up, but you can't. And every breath you take reminds you of that fact. So it goes.

We wake up most days not trying to serve, just trying to survive.

Zack is amazed by how calmly Kevin describes the events of the day. A walk in the park for him. A chill runs up Zack’s spine. 

Kevin had grown up playing left-handed. Seeing him take on Andrew right-handed was ballsy enough, seeing him actually score was surreal.

Why would affluence make him mad?" "Maybe he's mad that this is as good as it gets. Your big house. His good school. I think it's very difficult for kids these days, in a way. The country's very prosperity has become a burden, a dead end. Everything works, doesn't it? At least if you're white and middle class. So it must often seem to young people that they're not needed. In a sense, it's as if there's nothing more to do.

Like hot food I love you like warm bread & cold cuts, butter sammiches or, days later, after Thanksgiving when I want whatever's left

I'd get this, I luuuuuuuv you, buddy! stuff, and I'd just look at him like, Who are you talking to, guy? What does that mean, your dad 'loves' you and hasn't a [bleep]ing clue who you are? What's he love then? Some kid in Happy Days. Not me.

Neil almost learned to hate both Exy and Kevin. Kevin had gone from impossible to please to completely horrible to be around. [...] Neil was much better at instigating fights than winning them, but it'd be worth losing if he could just put a fist through Kevin's face once.

To me a good book is like a quiet friend—a friend who’s happy to share thoughts and feelings with you, who’s always there when you need them. Best of all, this friend doesn’t have any secrets. They trust you to understand them. They take you to their innermost places. They share their sensations and emotions—and they let you experience them. Wherever you go and however you feel, they are always by your side. For an hour, a day, a week, or forever, their life becomes yours. Their story is your story. That’s the kind of book I’m trying to write.

Fearlessness is better than a faint heart for any man who puts his nose out of doors. The length of my life and the day of my death were fated long ago.

Every day is a good day when you run.

But, look, it is good to have a dream so long as you do not let it gnaw at the substance of your present. I have seen men consumed by their dreams, and it is a sour business. If you cling too tightly to a dream—a poodle bitch or a personal sausage chef or whatever—then you miss the felicity of your heart beating and the smell of the grass growing and the sounds lizards make when you run through the neighborhood with our friend. Your dream should be like a favorite old bone that you savor and cherish and chew upon gently. Then, rather than stealing from you a wasted sigh or the life of an idle hour, it nourishes you, and you become strangely contented by nostalgia for a possible future, so juicy with possibility and redolent of sautéed garlic and decadent slabs of bacon that you feel full when you’ve eaten nothing. And then, one fine day when the sun smiles upon your snout, then the time is right, you bite down hard. The dream is yours. And then you chew on the next one.

I chose not to lose my mom, and instead to gain an angel. In my mind, my heart, and my life, she is still completely present to this day -- and as wise, compassionate and stubborn as ever

Imagine: You've spent all day traipsing around London, lost in a maze of chaos, trying to find a hidden illusion; you've been living on hope, ignoring reality, fueled only by feelings you don't understand. You've been looking for a dream, never truly believing you'd find it, but now - incredibly - you have. It's right there in front of you - just behind that off-white door. It's there...

The pediatrician must have thought me one of those neurotic mothers who craved distinction for her child but who in our civilization's latter-day degeneracy could only conceive of the exceptional in terms of deficiency or affliction.

He is not a forgiving tutor, and he doesn't know how to be nice. Kevin can piss anyone off on an Exy court, up to and including a drugged Andrew. Well, anyone except Renee, but she's not human so she doesn't count." Neil looked at Andrew again. "I thought his medicine made that impossible." "Spring was a learning experience." Nicky propped his racquet against his shoulder and started for the door. "Wish you'd seen it. Andrew would've taken Kevin's head off if Kevin hadn't already thrown Andrew's racquet halfway across the court. I can't wait to see how you handle it.

What I should be doing was the same thing everyone should be doing: enjoying the blessings I have while I have them, instead of worrying that one day they will be gone.

I'll know coffee works without cream and sugar when I see people buying unsweetened bakers chocolate for Valentine's Day.

Be conten with who you are and wish not change nor dread your last day nor look on to it.

I've come to accept that parts of life are constant, that just because something happens on two different days doesn't make it a goddamn miracle.

But even a stopped clock is right twice a day.

It’s like all my patients these days—I never know whether the kid in my dental chair is homeless or owns Google,” Ray said gruffly.

My darling Julie, I know you'll never see this letter, but it helps to write to you every day. It keeps you close to me. G-d, I miss you so. You haunt every hour of my life. I wish I'd never met you. No-I don't mean that! What good would my life be without my memories of you to make me smile. I keep wondering if you're happy. I want you to be. I want you to have a glorious life. That's why I couldn't say the things I knew you wanted to hear when we were together. I was afraid if I did, you'd wait for me for years. I knew you wanted me to say I loved you. Not saying that to you was the only unselfish thing I did in Colorado, and I now I regret even that. I love you, Julie. Christ, I love you so much. I'd give up all my life to have one year with you. Six months. Three. Anything. You stole my heart in just a few days, darling, but you gave me your heart, too. I know you did- I could see it in your eyes every time you looked at me. I don't regret the loss of my freedom any more or rage at the injustice of the years I spent in prison. Now, my only regret is that I can't have you. You're young, and I know you'll forget about me quickly and go on with your own life. That's exactly what you should do. It's what you must do. I want you to do that, Julie. That's such a lousy lie. What I really want is to see you again, to hold you in my arms, to make love to you over and over again until I've filled you so completely that there's no room left inside of you for anyone but me, ever. I never thought of sexual intercourse as 'making love' until you. You never knew that. .... I wish I had time to write you a better letter or that I'd kept one of the others I've written so I could send that instead. They were all much more coherent than this one. I won't send another letter to you, so don't watch for one. Letters will make us both hope and dream, and if I don't stop doing that, I will die of wanting you. Before I go--I see from the newspapers that Costner has a new movie coming out in the States. If you dare to start fantasizing over Kevin after you see it, I will haunt you for the rest of your life. I love you, Julie. I loved in Colorado. I love you here, where I am. I will always love you. Everywhere. Always.

It had been nine months since Riko Moriyama and Kevin Day stood in the same room together, nine months since Riko destroyed Kevin's hand, and now they were reunited on live television. The audience cheered their hearts out, delighted by Kathy's surprise, but they weren't quite loud enough to drown out Kevin's soft voice at Neil's side. The words sounded like a desperate prayer.

Think of (the Kingdom) like the sun. As it peeks through on a cloudy day, we do not say the sun has grown. We say, 'The sun has broken through.' Our view of the sun has changed, or obstacles to the sun have been removed, but we have not changed the sun.

if you step into the life of someone you envy for just a day, you’ll discover that everyone has their own problems, and they’re usually worse than yours. Because your problems are designed specifically for you, with the specific purpose of helping you grow.

It’s never been a matter for me to compare really. First hour of the day calls loudest as the last, no matter what the season.” Terrance said, adjusting his already faded Caterpillar cap, anxiously, clomping mud from his father’s old work boots, a glimmer of steel visible from the wear on one toe and the uncharted map of manhood sketched across the young boys face like a scar in the making.

Your child needs not only your attention but also a relationship with you.

The days were cold as evil but the evenings spread magic from the sea inwards and stretched out and tapped the place until it was open to our dreaming.

There is just one thing that tomorrow demands of you to make this happen: that you never stop believing in your power to create a better day.

It is said that once upon a time St. Kevin was kneeling with his arms stretched out in the form of a cross in Glendalough. . . As Kevin knelt and prayed, a blackbird mistook his outstretched hand for some kind of roost and swooped down upon it, laid a clutch of eggs in it and proceeded to nest in it as if it were the branch of a tree. Then, overcome with pity and constrained by his faith to love all creatures great and small, Kevin stayed immobile for hours and days and nights and weeks, holding out his hand until the eggs hatched and the fledging grew wings, true to life if subversive of common sense, at the intersection of natural process and the glimpsed ideal, at one and the same time a signpost and a reminder. Manifesting that order of poetry where we can at last grow up to that which we stored up as we grew.

She came to Neil last and stayed with him, feeling the line of his shoulder armor through his jersey. "How are you doing?" Neil drained both cups before answering. "I'm fine." Nicky fist-pumped in triumph. "Thank you for being so predictable, Neil. You just scored me ten bucks with two words." Matt looked up. "Are you serious? Who the hell bet against you?" Nicky jerked a thumb at Kevin. "There's a sucker born every minute.

Imagine: You've spent all day trapping around, lost in a maze of chaos, trying to fine a hidden illusion: You've been looking for hope, ignoring realty, fueled only but feelings you don't understand. Your've been looking for a dream, never truly believing you'll find it, but now- incredibly- you have. It's right there in front of you- just behind that off-white door. It's there….

I have salted my hatred and cured it, stored it in a dark cellar of my mind against the day when I could let it be my only nourishment. The day is finally come, and I will tear into this meat and savor its taste.

It's easy to complain about your life - how tough it is, how unfair it is, how stressful it is, how everyone else has it much better. But if you step into the life of someone you envy for just a day, you'll discover that everyone has their own problems, and they're usually worse than yours. Because your problems are designed specifically for you, with the specific purpose of helping you grow.

God is not a symbol of goodness. Goodness is a symbol of God.

Political correctness is modern day censorship. This still doesn’t justify you in being a douchebag.

I promise I will never stop sending you letters of love, Astrid. Until my dying day.

Perhaps Clarence’s knowledge of the enormous day-to-day expense of the war machine was too much for a man who’s own father had insisted, “Never to waste salt on a radish!

Daylight Savings" Like the money the light doesn't go as far these days

Put some fiddle in the middle, it'll make it better. Warm your heart like an old love letter. Make you feel like the day you met her.

...it was never the sun overhead that brightened my days. It was the son playing on my lap.

I'm unsure why one trifling incident this afternoon has moved me to write to you. But since we've been separated, I may most miss coming home to deliver the narrative curiosities of my day, the way a cat might lay mice at your feet: the small, humble offerings that couples proffer after foraging in separate backyards. Were you still installed in my kitchen, slathering crunchy peanut butter on Branola though it was almost time for dinner, I'd no sooner have put down the bags, one leaking a clear vicious drool, than this little story would come tumbling out, even before I chided that we're having pasta tonight so would you please not eat that whole sandwich.

We talk like we know what’s going on, but we don’t. We don’t know anything. We’re really young and we’re gonna screw up a lot. We’re gonna keep changing our minds and even sometimes our hearts. And through all that, the only real thing we can offer each other is forgiveness. I couldn’t do that. Or at least, I did it too late. Don’t make my mistake. Don’t let yourself be so angry you stop loving. Because one day you’ll wake up from that anger and the person you love will be gone.

There were times when I was blown away by the virgin beauty of the land. Kind of like that guy who lost his shit on the internet at the full double rainbow across the sky. Remember that guy? He kept asking what it meant, and it is not so difficult a question to answer. It means that we are loved, like all living things that Gaia sustains. There is a poetry in the canapes of forests and in the gentle roll of hills. A song in the wind and a benediction in the kiss of the sun. There are stories in the chuckle of waters in creeks and epics told in the tides of oceans. There are trees, Granuaile, that seem sometimes like they have grown all their lives just to feel the touch of my hand upon their trunks. They are so welcoming to me. You will feel that welcome in your hands some day. You'll feel it in your toes as you walk upon the earth. I cannot wait to see that love bloom in your eyes....' Tears glistened at the edges of her eyes... She knew precisely what I meant. She understood. And she became almost unbearably beautiful to me in that moment.

To paraphrase Titus 3:3, we live as slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in chaos and envy, hassled by others and hassling one another. We are all very busy, but not with what matters

Then why did you come here?" Andrew asked. "Because I'm tired," Neil said, trying to sound defeated. It didn't take much effort. "I have nowhere else to go, and I'm too jealous of Kevin to stay away from him. He knows what it's like to hate every day of his life, to wake up afraid every day, but he's got you at his back telling him everything's going to be okay. He has everything, even when he's lost everything, and I'm—" Neil didn't want to say it, but the word was already there, broken and pathetic between them, "—nothing. I'll always have and be nothing.

Just so you know, it makes no difference to me either way," Matt said, "except I would have seriously judged your taste a couple days ago." Neil assumed Andrew's territorial streak in Baltimore had a lot to do with Matt's change of heart. "Did he really choke Kevin?" "Took three of us to pull him off," Matt said. Neil didn't know what to say to that.

Wymack dragged his thumb along the back of his hand, tracing the path of Kevin's injury. "Kevin doesn't talk about his time at Evermore, but I could tell it wasn't the first time Riko or Moriyama laid a hand on him. It was just the first time Kevin was smart enough to pack his bags and walk away. So much for family, hm?" "I don't believe in family." "Neither do I." He meant it. Neil finally understood that look Wymack sent him in Millport, that perfect understanding that undid Neil's defenses. Neil searched his face, looking for the story behind that exhaustion. Whatever broke Wymack happened so long ago he wasn't even bitter over it anymore, but he was definitely still cracked if he poured so much time into the Foxhole Court.

For years I’d been awaiting that overriding urge I’d always heard about, the narcotic pining that draws childless women ineluctably to strangers’ strollers in parks. I wanted to be drowned by the hormonal imperative, to wake one day and throw my arms around your neck, reach down for you, and pray that while that black flower bloomed behind my eyes you had just left me with child. (With child: There’s a lovely warm sound to that expression, an archaic but tender acknowledgement that for nine months you have company wherever you go. Pregnant, by contrast, is heavy and bulging and always sounds to my ear like bad news: “I’m pregnant.” I instinctively picture a sixteen-year-old at the dinner table- pale, unwell, with a scoundrel of a boyfriend- forcing herself to blurt out her mother’s deepest fear.) (27)

Maybe universal nostalgia doesn't exist. Maybe each of us carries our own personal version of the better times. It's at about twnety-two years that we all begin to think of our childhood as the good ol' days and everything afterwards exists as a slow-motion face plant. The fall continues, through marriage, through career building, through parenthood, through old age, until we finally touch nose to ground. At twenty-two years old, I've just started, but I think I can already smell my own grave.

And I knew too well the loneliness that clamps around one’s heart when loved ones have passed on before. To have that companionship, the comfort of someone being at home for you for years, and then suddenly not to have it anymore—well, every day can seem darker after that, and the vise clutches tighter in your chest every night you spend in a lonely bed. Unless you find someone to spend some time with (and that time is sunlight, golden minutes when you forget you’re alone), that vise will eventually crush your heart.

How does anyone lose against the Foxes with Andrew in your goal?" "He's good, right? [...] Coach bribed Andrew into saving our collective asses with some really nice booze." "Bribed?" Neil echoed. "Andrew's good," Nicky said again, "but it doesn't really matter to him if we win or lose. You want him to care, you gotta give him incentive." "He can't play like that and not care." "Now you sound like Kevin. You'll find out the hard way, same as Kevin did. Kevin gave Andrew a lot of grief this spring [...]. Andrew walked off the court for an entire month. He said he'd break his own fingers if Coach made him play with Kevin again." The thought of Andrew willingly destroying his talent made Neil's heart clench. "But he's playing now." [...] "Only because Kevin is. Kevin got back on the court with a racquet in his right hand, and Andrew wasn't far behind him. Up until then they were fighting like cats and dogs. Now look at them. They're practically trading friendship bracelets and I couldn't fit a crowbar between them if it'd save my life." "But why?" Neil asked. "Andrew hates Kevin's obsession with Exy." "The day they start making sense to you, let me know," Nicky said [...]. "I gave up trying to sort it all out weeks ago.

Kevin's expression was indecipherable. Whatever it was, it didn't look particularly happy. "This is going to be a very long season." "I told you I wasn't ready." "You also said you wouldn't play with me, but here you are. [...] If you won't play with me, you'll play for me," Kevin said. "You're never going to get there on your own, so give your game to me." "Where is there?" Neil asked. [...] Kevin reached up and covered Neil's eyes with his free hand. "Forget the stadium," Kevin said. "Forget the Foxes and your useless high school team and your family. See it the only way it really matters, where Exy is the only road to take. What do you see?" [...] That thought was sombering, as it put him right back to square one and the fact that Neil Josten was a fleeting existence. It was cruel to even dream he could stay like this, but Kevin had escaped, hadn't he? Somehow he'd left that bloody room behind at Edgar Allan and become this, and Neil wanted the same so bad he could taste it. "You," Neil said at last. [...] "Tell me I can have your game." [...] "Take it." "Neil understands," Kevin said, dropping his hand and sending Andrew a pointed look. "Congratulations are in order, I suppose! Since I have non to give, I will tell the others to respond appropriately." Andrew pushed himself to his feet and swallowed more whiskey on the way up. "[...] As it is, I might puke from all the fanaticism going around.

The wind and the grass and something in the sky, sun, or moon, shining on our backs as we run: They are gifts that humans toss away like socks on Christmas morning, because we see them every day and don't think of them as gifts anymore. But new socks are always better than old socks. And the wind and grass and sky, I think, are better seen with new eyes than jaded ones. I hope my eyes will never grow old.

There is heroism to be found in great battles, it is true; warriors with stable knees who fight and know that they will die for an idea or for the safety of loved ones back home. But there are also people who spend their entire adulthood at a soulless job they despise to make sure their children have something to eat that night so that one day those kids may lead better, more fulfilling lives than their parents. The warrior and the worker both make sacrifices. Who, then, is more heroic? Can any of us judge? I don't think I'm qualified. I'll let history decide. But I do not think we should leave it all up to warriors and rulers to speak to the future.

I know it sounds abysmal…” he chuckled at the mere thought of it, “but I just want to be happy and content” “Do you not dream big? Do you not want to travel?” Kalki rounded his arms around his little brother. “Perhaps I chose not to. Perhaps big doesn’t always matter. It’s also the little things, specks of happiness that we go through in a day that we should look out for. It’s funny how grief makes you realize the good things you have overlooked in life

You sound more like them every day," Andrew said. Neil guessed he meant their more optimistic teammates. "You're going to have to come up with something of your own to hold onto. I'm safe, Kevin doesn't need your protection anymore, Nicky's going back to Erik eventually, and Aaron's got Katelyn. What are you going to live for if you're not playing sheepdog for us?" "Aaron doesn't have Katelyn." "Denial doesn't suit you. We talked about this." "You talked," Andrew said. "I didn't listen." "Choose us," Neil said. It was enough to shut Andrew up—maybe only for a second, but Neil would take any opening he could get. "Kevin's going to retake his spot on Court before he graduates. He thinks I can make the cut with enough practice and time. Come with us. Let's all play in the Olympics together one day. We'd be unstoppable." "That's your obsession, not mine." "Borrow it until you have something of your own.

Where's my life gone? Where's it going? Looking across the grassy marshland to Flint and up the coast to Point Of Air, I start to wonder what all those poor fuckers in Wales are doing with their lives. Screwing? Sleeping in? Debating whether to take breakfast in bed to their broken fathers? Unlikely. They're probably doing what the gilded folk of Hollywood are doing, or Kowloon or Port Elizabeth. Worrying. Worrying about getting old, or about work, or about money, or about their boyfriend, mistress, lover, house, health, future. Life is shit. There is no fucking point to any of it. Not now that we've evolved past the survival stage. Maybe we used to live to hunt to kill to eat to live another day. Now we just kill time in as many sophisticated ways as possible. Pointless jobs. Pointless lives. Work. Television. Football.

There was once a fish that lived in a pond. One day, he met another fish that used to live in the sea. The pond fish asked, “What is the sea?” and the sea fish said, “It is a vast amount of water that is a million, million times bigger than your pond.” The pond fish never talked to the sea fish again because he thought the sea fish was a liar. What can we learn from this?

The movie Bull Durham was written by a man who grew up in the faith and was disillusioned by the church. It begins with the female lead saying, “I believe in the church of baseball. I've tried all the major religions and most of the minor ones … and the only church that truly feeds the soul is baseball.” Later in the movie the Kevin Costner character recites his creed: “I believe in the soul … the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch … I believe there ought to be a constitutional amendment outlawing Astroturf and the designated hitter. I believe in long, slow, deep, soft kisses that last three days.”4 My wife liked that one. A little too much. My wife is a Kevin Costner fundamentalist. Kevin said it; she believes it; that settles it.

He rowed them past the last of the stars. He rowed them clear of the night's embrace. He rowed them straight into and beyond the break of day. And somewhere along that stretch of river, he also rowed them across an invisible fault line, a seam on the American continent that separates the terrain where the ephemeral events of everyday reality unfold from a more rarefied and singular realm, the place where mythic and permanent journeys of the imagination, such as those of John Wesley Powell, reside - the place of legends.

In Debt, the anthropologist David Graeber tells the story of Tei Reinga, a Maori villager and “notorious glutton” who used to wander up and down the New Zealand coast, badgering the local fishermen by asking for the best portions of their catch. Since it’s impolite in Maori culture (as in many cultures) to refuse a direct request for food, the fishermen would oblige—but with ever-increasing reluctance. And so as Reinga continued to ask for food, their resentment grew until “one day, people decided enough was enough and killed him.” This story is extreme, to say the least, but it illustrates how norm-following and norm-enforcement can be a very high-stakes game. Reinga flouted an important norm (against freeloading) and eventually paid dearly for it. But just as tellingly, the fishermen who put him to death felt so duty-bound by a different norm (the norm of food-sharing) that they followed it even to the point of building up murderous resentment. “Couldn’t you just have said no to Reinga’s requests?!” we want to shout at the villagers.