Sam Carpenter Quotes

Da. This is going very well already." Thomas barked out a laugh. "There are seven of us against the Red King and his thirteen most powerful nobles, and it's going well?" Mouse sneezed. "Eight," Thomas corrected himself. He rolled his eyes and said, "And the psycho death faerie makes it nine." "It is like movie," Sanya said, nodding. "Dibs on Legolas." "Are you kidding?" Thomas said. "I'm obviously Legolas. You're . . ." He squinted thoughtfully at Sanya and then at Martin. "Well. He's Boromir and you're clearly Aragorn." "Martin is so dour, he is more like Gimli." Sanya pointed at Susan. "Her sword is much more like Aragorn's." "Aragorn wishes he looked that good," countered Thomas. "What about Karrin?" Sanya asked. "What--for Gimli?" Thomas mused. "She is fairly--" "Finish that sentence, Raith, and we throw down," said Murphy in a calm, level voice. "Tough," Thomas said, his expression aggrieved. "I was going to say 'tough.' " As the discussion went on--with Molly's sponsorship, Mouse was lobbying to claim Gimli on the basis of being the shortest, the stoutest, and the hairiest-- "Sanya," I said. "Who did I get cast as?" "Sam," Sanya said. I blinked at him. "Not . . . Oh, for crying out loud, it was perfectly obvious who I should have been." Sanya shrugged. "It was no contest. They gave Gandalf to your godmother. You got Sam.

I met this six-year-old child, with this blank, pale, emotionless face, and the blackest eyes... the devil's eyes." ~Dr. Sam Loomis/Halloween

Some men know the exact amount of money in their bank accounts,” she continued. “Other men know how many miles are on their car and how many more miles it’ll handle. Other men know the batting average of their favorite baseball player and more other men know the exact sum Uncle Sam has screwed ’em. Your father knows no such figures. The only numbers Landon Carpenter has in his head are the numbers of stars in the sky on the days his children were born. I don’t know about you, but I would say that a man who has skies in his head full of the stars of his children, is a man who deserves his child’s love. Especially from the child with the most stars.

Any jackass can kick down a barn. It takes a carpenter to build on.

Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one." (God comment to reflect on Nazism)

Your job is not to be a fire killer. Your job is to prevent fires.

If solid goals are established and the majority of time is spent manipulating systems toward those goals, great results will materialize naturally.

Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one." (Good comment for reflecting on Nazism)

remember that most people don’t fail by making overt mistakes. They fail because they don’t take action.

Your task is to optimize one system after another, not careen through the day randomly taking care of whatever problems erupt. Your job is not to be a fire killer. Your job is to prevent fires.

Strict adherence to written procedure is critical, but we counterbalance this strictness with our eagerness to make instant adjustments should the environment change or should someone come up with a better idea.

Too many of us are paralyzed in the static snapshot of how we think things should be instead of working with the mechanics of the world as it is. Life is not a snapshot; it’s a real-time, streaming video—and the video plays on whether we participate in it or not.

Problems are gifts that inspire us to action. A problem prompts the act of creating or improving a system or procedure. We don’t want setbacks, but when one occurs we think, ‘thank you for this wake-up call,’ and take assertive system-improvement action to prevent the setback from happening again.” Yes, our internal

the leader’s role is to first see the wheels of the machine, and then to get those wheels turning with maximum efficiency.

most people don’t fail by making overt mistakes. They fail because they don’t take action.

leadership must focus on improving processes, not on performing the work or on repeatedly snuffing out brushfires. Quality products or services, a stable staff, and profitability are the result of the quality systems that underlie them, not the reverse.

The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you're inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it. The Matrix, 1999

read slowly, moving his lips over the words. “Everything is only for a day, both that which remembers and that which is remembered. “Observe constantly that all things take place by change, and accustom thyself to consider that the nature of the universe loves nothing so much as to change things which are and to make new things like them. For everything that exists is in a manner the seed of that which will be.” Lee glanced down the page. “Thou wilt die soon and thou are not yet simple nor free from perturbations, nor without suspicion of being hurt by external things, nor kindly disposed towards all; nor dost thou yet place wisdom only in acting justly.” Lee looked up from the page, and he answered the book as he would answer one of his ancient relatives. “That is true,” he said. “It’s very hard. I’m sorry. But don’t forget that you also say, ‘Always run the short way and the short way is the natural’—don’t forget that.” He let the pages slip past his fingers to the fly leaf where was written with a broad carpenter’s pencil, “Sam’l Hamilton.

In the Western world, 10 percent of adults are alcoholics, 70 percent drink copious amounts of caffeine, 20 percent are addicted to tobacco, and more than 10 percent rely on antidepressants. Throw in the other legal and illegal drugs, and it is safe to say that each day, 98 percent of us ingest at least one mood-altering substance in our endless search for a better state of mind. Of course, many of us are multisubstance users, for instance, consuming caffeine in the morning and alcohol at night. One addictive substance counters the negative effects of the other in the classic, endless loop of Western chemical mood adjustment.

I have this example of what I call the “hardware store hammer”: A woman is in a hardware store and picks up a hammer. When she is checking out, the shop owner says, “What are you going to use this hammer for?” And she says, “My husband told me to buy a hammer. We’re putting up some pictures in the kitchen.” The owner might say, “Okay. But this is a professional carpenter’s hammer. For your purpose, that one over there would do just fine, and it’s a third the price.” That’s the difference between a relationship and a transaction. If you have a concern that other people do well for themselves, then I think you want this level of honesty. But our society might be losing that.

The truth of Woodstock? The nonstop music was good but few bands played their best due to the confusion and pervasive drug ingestion. Yes it was peaceful, but after that first glorious day it was cold and wet, and we sat in the mud shivering, drenched, hungry, and thirsty. Huddled in the rain, a half million of us worked hard to relax, insistent in our success at finding freedom and joy outside the system. Peace, brother! In the downpour, over and over again we told ourselves that all we needed was love. We really had jumped outside the everyday world, but in our T-shirts, jeans, and little else, we were utterly unprepared as the relentless torrent hammered down. It was no contest as soft theory met bare-knuckled reality.

I direct Work the System to those who have the following chronic internal dialogue: "There are things I must do right now and there is barely the the time or money or energy to do them. I will bulldoze my way through these tasks and, as usual they will be completed just in time - but the results will be of marginal quality and my body and mind will continue to be stretched to the breaking point. I'm tired and stressed and can't seem to shake free from living on the edge and I worry about my frame of mind and my health. There is too much chaos around me, too little control and never enough money. Things are not what they should be.

On October 11 Peter died. “Peter dead!” screamed Dolly. How much more could she suffer? William soon learned. It was not enough that there was no faithful Kitty there to comfort her in her grief - not friends of any kind in Mudnabati - but William himself was completely distracted by problems with the burial. For it seemed no one would help. “I can’t get the carpenters at the plant to make us a coffin,” William told Felix out of Dolly’s hearing. “It seems that not only do both Hindus and Muslims refuse to touch the dead in any way but they will not assist in any way.” Finally he had to coerce four Muslim workers into digging a grave south of the plant, far away from any known Muslim graves.

Any jackass can kick down a barn, but it takes a carpenter to build one.

My “Sam Gamgee” is indeed a reflexion of the English soldier, of the privates and batmen I knew in the 1914 war, and recognised as so far superior to myself.

the colossal human error is the assumption that there is a cosmic inclination to chaos, when the mechanical truth is that there is a default predisposition toward order.

When you realize you are watching your temporary depression from the outside, you will know you have reached a higher level of control.

As you stumble, walk, and sprint to that end, don’t underestimate your accomplishment and your contribution.

Barbary Coast was rather a mess when Howard Hawks took over direction of a film initially assigned by Sam Goldwyn to William Wyler. Hawks was famous—and sometimes notorious—for rewriting scripts on the set, inviting his actors to contribute lines. At the same time, he was loath to cede his authority, or to allow actors to take over a production. Meta Carpenter, Hawks’s secretary and sometime script supervisor, vividly recalled how curt—even insulting—the director could be. “Shut up, Walter,” Hawks barked after Brennan apparently offered one too many suggestions. Carpenter never forgot the sight of the deflated actor, who took a day to recover from this rebuff. But Walter was resilient and adaptable. He later told his granddaughter Claudia that he survived the exhausting work of filmmaking by taking catnaps during breaks. He could sleep anywhere on anything—even a coil of rope.

I’m trying to free your mind but I can only show you the door. You’re the one who has to walk through it. —MORPHEUS

Think this pleasant thought: “Money keeps materializing in my bank account while I’m elsewhere.

It is often darkest just before dawn. —SOJOURNER TRUTH

leadership must focus on improving processes, not on performing the work or on repeatedly snuffing out brushfires.

Algunos hombres saben la cantidad exacta de dinero que tienen en sus cuentas corrientes —continuó—. Otros hombres saben cuántos kilómetros tiene su coche y cuántos kilómetros más podrá recorrer. Otros hombres saben el promedio de bateo de su jugador de béisbol favorito y más hombres aún saben la suma exacta que el Tío Sam les ha sacado. Tu padre no sabe esas cifras. Los únicos números que Landon Carpenter tiene en su cabeza son los números de estrellas que había en el cielo los días que sus hijos nacieron. No sé tú, pero yo diría que un hombre que tiene en la cabeza los cielos llenos de las estrellas de sus hijos es un hombre que se merece el amor de esos hijos. Sobre todo, de la hija con más estrellas.

Addressing the problem, and then taking this second step to fix the cause of the problem, distinguishes the people who are in control from the people who are not in control - the successful from the unsuccessful.

Mysterious people typically don't do well in business or friendship.

unmanaged systems produce random results, and random results always add up to chaos.