Skateboard Boy Quotes

I want you to tell me about every person you’ve ever been in love with. Tell me why you loved them, then tell me why they loved you. Tell me about a day in your life you didn’t think you’d live through. Tell me what the word home means to you and tell me in a way that I’ll know your mother’s name just by the way you describe your bedroom when you were eight. See, I want to know the first time you felt the weight of hate, and if that day still trembles beneath your bones. Do you prefer to play in puddles of rain or bounce in the bellies of snow? And if you were to build a snowman, would you rip two branches from a tree to build your snowman arms or would leave your snowman armless for the sake of being harmless to the tree? And if you would, would you notice how that tree weeps for you because your snowman has no arms to hug you every time you kiss him on the cheek? Do you kiss your friends on the cheek? Do you sleep beside them when they’re sad even if it makes your lover mad? Do you think that anger is a sincere emotion or just the timid motion of a fragile heart trying to beat away its pain? See, I wanna know what you think of your first name, and if you often lie awake at night and imagine your mother’s joy when she spoke it for the very first time. I want you to tell me all the ways you’ve been unkind. Tell me all the ways you’ve been cruel. Tell me, knowing I often picture Gandhi at ten years old beating up little boys at school. If you were walking by a chemical plant where smokestacks were filling the sky with dark black clouds would you holler “Poison! Poison! Poison!” really loud or would you whisper “That cloud looks like a fish, and that cloud looks like a fairy!” Do you believe that Mary was really a virgin? Do you believe that Moses really parted the sea? And if you don’t believe in miracles, tell me — how would you explain the miracle of my life to me? See, I wanna know if you believe in any god or if you believe in many gods or better yet what gods believe in you. And for all the times that you’ve knelt before the temple of yourself, have the prayers you asked come true? And if they didn’t, did you feel denied? And if you felt denied, denied by who? I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling good. I wanna know what you see when you look in the mirror on a day you’re feeling bad. I wanna know the first person who taught you your beauty could ever be reflected on a lousy piece of glass. If you ever reach enlightenment will you remember how to laugh? Have you ever been a song? Would you think less of me if I told you I’ve lived my entire life a little off-key? And I’m not nearly as smart as my poetry I just plagiarize the thoughts of the people around me who have learned the wisdom of silence. Do you believe that concrete perpetuates violence? And if you do — I want you to tell me of a meadow where my skateboard will soar. See, I wanna know more than what you do for a living. I wanna know how much of your life you spend just giving, and if you love yourself enough to also receive sometimes. I wanna know if you bleed sometimes from other people’s wounds, and if you dream sometimes that this life is just a balloon — that if you wanted to, you could pop, but you never would ‘cause you’d never want it to stop. If a tree fell in the forest and you were the only one there to hear — if its fall to the ground didn’t make a sound, would you panic in fear that you didn’t exist, or would you bask in the bliss of your nothingness? And lastly, let me ask you this: If you and I went for a walk and the entire walk, we didn’t talk — do you think eventually, we’d… kiss? No, wait. That’s asking too much — after all, this is only our first date.

When I was growing up, my mother enrolled me into the same classes as my brother so I learned karate, kung fu, and swimming. She also took us fishing, skateboarding, and to martial arts films. Needless to say, my mom was and still is cool. - Strong by Kailin Gow

What happened?" Wyatt asked Crystal, and stood back so the two of them could come inside out of the oppressive heat. "Why are you asking her?" Reed thumped past him. "I'm the one on crutches." "She'll tell me the truth," Wyatt said. "You'll just give me some bullshit story that will end with 'You should see the other guy'." "You wound me, bro" [Reed] "He tore his ACL the day before yesterday trying to do a stunt on a skateboard." [Crystal] "Mendoza dared him." [Luke Colter] "No one held a gun to the fool's head" [Mendoza]

You’re still trying to get out of hell, and it’s a long climb. You’ll think flight may be the answer, but you don’t learn to skateboard by watching boys on the half-pipe, and you don’t learn to fly by watching boys jump off cliffs, shirtless, skinny, while you hold the car keys.

They want to control humankind through what they call selective breeding. The Nazis started it, but now the nwo are continuing it. See, the only way to control population is to first get it back down to manageable size. They're culling the herd, same way the game commission does when deer population gets out of control. That's why we've got diseases like cancer and aids. You telling me that we can put a little goddamn skateboard-looking robot on Mars and have it send pictures back, but we can't find a cure for cancer? There's a cure. You can bet on that, boys. There's a goddamn cure. They just won't release it because cancer helps cut down the population.

As far as boys went, I would have probably attracted more attention from the male species if I were a skateboard.

He realizes finally that the boy he's been watching snap his board into the air, then neatly touch down- long, black, gleaming hair, pale white skin- is Felice. He didn't know she'd learned how to skateboard. He's never seen her like this before- so intently focused and content- her beauty beside the point, merely part of the catalog of effects- speed, balance, daring. He admires her athletic form and feels moved in some unexpected way.

Jake glanced up at the curtained windows. A boy slept inside one of those rooms. Could be me, he thought. Could be me with the garden and the swing, and a pad with all the games on it, and a mobile, and the Santa Cruz; and him out here, dead parents, scrounging other people’s clothes, on the run. There was the skateboard, leaned up against the porch, like it was the simplest thing in the world to own it. He took a few steps towards it. –Don’t. Poacher’s voice was a whisper.

How recently have the sharks been fed?" the guy next to me asked. Alex and I were in a small room with a dry-erase board, a perky blonde aquarium emplyee, and three guys from Rutgers who'd won their fraternity Christmas prize. True to Alex's promise, no one had seen me in my miniscule jungle print. Another perky girl had handed me a wet suit and pointed me into a changing room. So as I listened to the basics of shark tank etiquette, I was fully encased in blue neoprene from ankle to jaw. The frat boys kept sneaking looks at me when they thought I-and Alex-wasn't looking. It made me feel just a little bit better. Alex's promise that I didn't have to get into the water if I really didn't want to helped, too. It had gotten me out of the car and into the aquarium. "You can do it," he'd coaxed. "Yes," I'd answered, thinking of the skateboarder a little and "fake it til you make it" more. "I can do it." "Yesterday." Perky Girl answered the feeding question. "Believe me. They're not hungry." I wanted to know exactly how she knew that.Did she ask the sharks? "Okay," she chirped. "Let's get snorkeling.

The boy whose father takes him swimming, the girl whose mother takes her to the theater, children whose parents do things with them - these are not skateboarders.

Now, Tom had seemed like a decent guy when we watched him during track practice, and seeing that sign on the bulletin board had given us a clue that he had a good heart, too. But it was almost as if he knew we needed more convincing. And by the time we lost him—just a few streets away from our block—we were positive he couldn’t be the same guy who had robbed Speedy Jack’s. In fact, he turned out to be the nicest, most polite, most civic-minded boy I’ve ever seen. Here’s what we saw him do: He spotted a dog wandering into the road and stopped to coax it onto the sidewalk. He helped a little old lady across the street (really!), holding his hand up to stop traffic for her. He hopped off his skateboard and bent down to tie a child’s shoe. The mother (whose arms were full of groceries) looked like she wanted to hug him. He gave directions to a motorist, nodding politely at all her questions. He picked up litter from the sidewalk and threw it into a trash can. He stopped to admire a baby in its carriage. It was while he was cooing over the baby that Sunny gave me a disgusted look. “Are we wasting our time, or what?” she asked. I giggled. “Somehow I find it hard to believe he could swat a fly, much less hold up a store.” When Tom finished with the baby, he straightened up, stepped back onto his skateboard, and zipped around a corner. We let him go. Sunny sighed. “He’ll make some girl a fine husband one day,” she said, with a straight face. Then we cracked up. We were still laughing about it a half hour later, when Jill and Maggie showed up at Sunny’s for our party-planning session. We told them all about “Saint Tom,” as we’d begun to call him.

But it isn’t the fun of DIY invention, urban exploration, physical danger, and civil disorder that the Z-Boys enjoyed in 1976. It is fun within serious limits, and for all of its thrills it is (by contrast) scripted. And rather obedient. The fact that there are public skateparks and high-performance skateboards signals progress: America has embraced this sport, as it did bicycles in the nineteenth century. Towns want to make skating safe and acceptable. The economy has more opportunity to grow. America is better off for all of this. Yet such government and commercial intervention in a sport that was born of radical liberty means that the fun itself has changed; it has become mediated. For the skaters who take pride in their flashy store-bought equipment have already missed the Z-Boys’ joke: Skating is a guerrilla activity. It’s the fun of beating, not supporting, the system. P. T. Barnum said it himself: all of business is humbug. How else could business turn a profit, if it didn’t trick you with advertising? If it didn’t hook you with its product? This particular brand of humbug was perfected in the late 1960s, when merchandise was developed and marketed and sold to make Americans feel like rebels. Now, as then, customers always pay for this privilege, and purveyors keep it safe (and generally clean) to curb their liability. They can’t afford customers taking real risks. Plus it’s bad for business to encourage real rebellion. And yet, marketers know Americans love fun—they have known this for centuries. And they know that Americans, especially kids, crave autonomy and participation, so they simulate the DIY experience at franchises like the Build-A-Bear “workshops,” where kids construct teddy bears from limited options, or “DIY” restaurants, where customers pay to grill their own steaks, fry their own pancakes, make their own Bloody Marys. These pay-to-play stores and restaurants are, in a sense, more active, more “fun,” than their traditional competition: that’s their big selling point. But in both cases (as Barnum knew) the joke is still on you: the personalized bear is a standardized mishmash, the personalized food is often inedible. As Las Vegas knows, the house always wins. In the history of radical American fun, pleasure comes from resistance, risk, and participation—the same virtues celebrated in the “Port Huron Statement” and the Digger Papers, in the flapper’s slang and the Pinkster Ode. In the history of commercial amusement, most pleasures for sale are by necessity passive. They curtail creativity and they limit participation (as they do, say, in a laser-tag arena) to a narrow range of calculated surprises, often amplified by dazzling technology. To this extent, TV and computer screens, from the tiny to the colossal, have become the scourge of American fun. The ubiquity of TV screens in public spaces (even in taxicabs and elevators) shows that such viewing isn’t amusement at all but rather an aggressive, ubiquitous distraction. Although a punky insurgency of heedless satire has stung the airwaves in recent decades—from equal-opportunity offenders like The Simpsons and South Park to Comedy Central’s rabble-rousing pundits, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert—the prevailing “fun” of commercial amusement puts minimal demands on citizens, besides their time and money. TV’s inherent ease seems to be its appeal, but it also sends a sobering, Jumbotron-sized message about the health of the public sphere.

No!” said all the girls. “Are you excited about moving up to third grade?” Mrs. Dole asked. “Yes!” said all the girls. “No!” said all the boys. “I was thinking. Wouldn’t it be nice to give presents to Mrs. Daisy?” said Mrs. Dole. “She worked so hard for you all year. What would you like to give her?” “I’ll give her a skateboard,” I said. “That’s what you want, Arlo!” Andrea said, rolling her eyes. “Try to think of something Mrs. Daisy

But while I wanted to edit more content for my social media, I found myself watching the video I had taken of Vera learning to skateboard at the park tonight. We were standing close, my hands on her hips. I cursed under my breath and balled my hand into a fist. In the video, she looked up at me like nobody had fucking looked at me before. I’d thought she—my throat tightened—felt the same way as me. I was wrong.

The majority of the Phone Booth clientele was probably straight, yet somehow the atmosphere was predominantly gay. This was an advantageous situation; the straight boys respectfully gave the impression they might capitulate. Ostensibly straight boys whom I kissed there included a construction site foreman, a professional skateboarder and an acrobat. Somebody would always put ‘Family Affair’ by Mary J. Blige on the jukebox, with its message about leaving one’s situations behind at the door.

It ain't my idea to leave before dawn. My ole lady decided to visit Nana, that's why the house stinks of hairspray. You know why she's leaving early: so nobody sees her scurry through town on foot. All she wants is for them to see her arrived, all hunky-dory. Not scurrying. It's a learning I made since the car went. 'Well I just can't believe there isn't a pair of Tumbledowns around town, I mean, I'll have to try down by Nana's.' She gives off breathy noises, and flicks her fingertips through my hair. Then she takes a step back and frowns. It means goodbye. 'Promise me you won't miss your therapy.' An electric purple sky spills stars behind the pumpjack, calling home the last moths for the night. It reminds me of the morning when ole Mrs Lechuga was out here, all devastated. I try not to think about it. Instead I look ahead to today. Going to Keeter's is a smart idea; if anybody sees me out there, they'll say, 'We saw Vernon out by Keeter's,' and nobody will know if they mean the auto shop, or the piece of land. See? Vernon Gray-matter Little. In return, I've asked Fate to help me solve the cash thing. It's become clear that cash is the only way to deal with problems in life. I even scraped up a few things to pawn in town, if it comes to that. I know it'll come to that, so I have them with me in my pack – my clarinet, my skateboard, and fourteen music discs. They're in the pack with my lunchbox, which contains my sandwich, the two joints, and a piece of paper with some internet addresses on it. As for the joints and the piece of paper, I heard the voice of Jesus last night. He advised me to get wasted, fast. If at first you don't succeed, he said, get wasted off your fucken ass. My plan is to sit out at Keeter's and get some new ideas, ideas borne out of the bravery of wastedness. I ride down empty roads of frosted silver, trees overhead swish cool hints of warm panties in bedclothes. Liberty Drive is naked, save for droppings of hay, and Bar-B-Chew Barn wrappers. In this light you can't see the stains on the sidewalk by the school. As the gym building passes by, all hulky and black, I look the other way, and think of other things. Music's a crazy thing, when you think about it. Interesting how I decided which discs not to pawn. I could've kept some party music, but that would've just tried to boost me up, all this thin kind of 'Tss-tss-tss,' music. You get all boosted up, convinced you're going to win in life, then the song's over and you discover you fucken lost. That's why you end up playing those songs over and over, in case you didn't know. Cream pie, boy. I could've kept back some heavy metal too, but that's likely to drive me to fucken suicide. What I need is some Eminem, some angry poetry, but you can't buy that stuff in Martirio. Like it was an animal sex doll or something, you can't buy angry poetry. When you say gangsta around here, they still think of Bonnie & fucken Clyde. Nah, guess what: I ended up keeping my ole Country albums. Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson, Johnny Paycheck – even my daddy's ole Hank Williams compilation. I kept them because those boys have seen some shit – hell, all they sing about is the shit they've seen; you just know they woke up plenty of times on a wooden floor somewhere, with ninety flavors of trouble riding on their ass. The slide-guitar understands your trouble. Then all you need is the beer.

In the porch of one house Jake saw a skateboard and it made his heart jump: a Santa Cruz, one of the expensive ones. He’d begged for one for years. He looked at the house, its closed curtains. There was a child in there, maybe a boy same age as him, dreaming in a bed, who had a Santa Cruz,

As far as boys went, I would have probably attracted more attention from the male species if I were a skateboard.