Smiley Ball Quotes

It was one of life's treats, wasn't it, paying a visit to your past, swinging like a ball on a string away from the person you loved, always knowing that the string must pull you back, and you would be oh so glad to get there.

It was one of life’s treats, wasn’t it, paying a visit to your past, swinging like a ball on a string away from the person you loved, always knowing that the string must pull you back, and you would be oh so glad to get there.

Good shot.” “Not really. I was aiming for his balls.

I was born in the Year of the Smiley Face: 1963. That’s when a graphic designer from Worcester, Massachusetts, named Harvey Ball invented the now-ubiquitous grinning yellow graphic. Originally, Ball’s creation was designed to cheer up people who worked at, of all places, an insurance company, but it has since become synonymous with the frothy, quintessentially American brand of happiness.

Along the way, though, I was always careful not to get greedy or to go for the quick buck--despite the temptations in the early days. Financially, it was hard saying no to big appearance fees from TV shows like I’m a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here or Survivor--but I always had the long goal in mind and tried to keep the main thing the main thing. And not get distracted by fluff. Instead, know your strengths. I also tended instinctively to shy away from both TV and the whole concept of fame--partly, I am sure, because I didn’t have the self-belief to feel I deserved either fame or money. (Time and experience have since taught me that fame and money very rarely go to the worthy, by the way--hence we shouldn’t ever be too impressed by either of those imposters. Value folk for who they are, how they live, and what they give--that’s a much better benchmark.) So I resisted TV quite heavily--even ironically spurning the offers of the original Man vs. Wild producer, Rob MacIver, some three times, before finally agreeing to do a pilot show. But what a dope I was. Bear, didn’t you listen to your grandma when she wrote: “When the ball rolls your way grab it. We so rarely get a second chance. (Although miraculously, this does sometimes happen, too.)”? But I just didn’t want to be pushed into TV, I wanted to keep focused on my strengths, and trust those skills. My father always used to say that if you focus on doing your job well, then money will often follow. But chase the money and it has a habit of slipping through your fingers. I always liked that. But learning that I could do both things--TV, as well as my core skills--was a big lesson. Maybe it would be possible to do programs without having to be a smiley media person. I wondered. Grandma? “Indeed--when the ball rolls your way--grab it.

In the end, Turk sent Papadopoulos emails saying that meeting him had been the “highlight of my trip” and gushing, “I am excited about what the future holds for us :)”—the smiley-face symbol accentuating the point.

Conservation of energy. Pffft. For weeks we had been on the same topic in physics, dropping balls after balls from slopes and towers. I pulled out a packet I had to read for a quiz, along with a fat notebook, and made myself comfortable. I couldn’t keep myself focused for long, however—I had begun to wander off to realms of thought. I doodled absently on my textbook until all the balls wore smiley faces—and thought, inanely to myself, that somewhere off in a distant world there might be philosophers who deemed this concept odd. How far did these laws stretch? To what barren edges of physics were these truths indeed truths? Was energy conserved even when it felt more natural not to? It would for sure be funny if, for instance, you had to make water crawl up a wall to conserve energy. It seemed for a moment that the world was made up of seemingly arbitrary laws, some patchwork of ambiguous concepts and wayward statements that somehow, coincidentally, explained everyday occurrences. I spun my pencil around on the palm of my hand, wondering if there were things out there that evaded these laws. Maybe you could read minds. Maybe telepathy was real. Maybe if you fell in love, something changed within you.

Nobody’s brought off the Eastern novel recently, my view. Greene managed it, if you can take Greene, which I can’t—too much popery. Malraux, if you like philosophy, which I don’t. Maugham you can have, and before that it’s back to Conrad. Cheers. Mind my saying something ?” Jerry filled Ming’s glass. “Go easy on the Hemingway stuff. All that grace under pressure, love with your balls shot off. They don’t like it, my view. It’s been said.