Solo Drive Quotes

As I look back on the trip now, as I try to sort out fact from fiction, try to remember how I felt at that particular time, or during that particular incident, try to relive those memories that have been buried so deep, and distorted so ruthlessly, there is one clear fact that emerges from the quagmire. The trip was easy. It was no more dangerous than crossing the street, or driving to the beach, or eating peanuts. The two important things that I did learn were that you are as powerful and strong as you allow yourself to be, and that the most difficult part of any endeavor is taking the first step, making the first decision. And I knew even then that I would forget them time and time again and would have to go back and repeat those words that had become meaningless and try to remember. I knew even then that, instead of remembering the truth of it, I would lapse into a useless nostalgia. Camel trips, as I suspected all a long, and as I was about to have confirmed, do not begin or end, they merely change form.

There are men who seem destined to always go first, to lead the way. They are confident in life, they are the first to go beyond it. Whatever there is to know, they learn before others. Their very existence gives strength and drives one onward. Love and jealousy were mingled there in the darkness, love and despair.

Where there’s smoke, there’s usually fire,” Solo says before adding quietly, “Usually an electrical fire near the hyperspace drive, which Chewie always warns me about…

I could fly a solo mission to Mars on the back of a winged Pegasus and not impress my mother,

He had various “men” to stick into the cabs of his trucks. Some of them were round-headed guys scrounged from his PlaySkool toys. Others were soldiers. Not a few were what he called “Star Wars Guys.” These included Luke, Han Solo, the Imperial Creep (aka Darth Vader), a Bespin Warrior, and Tad’s absolute favorite, Greedo. Greedo always got to drive the Tonka dozer.

You damned, silly-looking cluck, are you trying to drive me insane? … Yes, I could write music. I can write you a motet, or a sonata, or a waltz, or a cornet solo, with variation—anything at all, anything you want. And not one note of it will be worth the match it would take to burn it. You think I’m hot stuff, don’t you? You, lying there every day, dreaming about rainbows.

Do we ever stop dreaming? I know I haven't. I must have been at least twenty-five when the Spice Girls happened, and I distinctly remember imagining my way into the group. I was going to be the sixth Spice, 'Massive Spice', who, against all the odds, would become the most popular and lusted-after Spice. The Spice who sang the vast majority of solo numbers in the up-tempo tracks. The Spice who really went the distance. And I still haven't quite given up on the Wimbledon Ladies' Singles Championship. I mean, it can't be too late, can it? I've got a lovely clean T-shirt, and I've figured out exactly how I'd respond to winning the final point (lie on floor wailing, get up, do triumphant lap of the ring slapping crowd members' box). It can't be just me who does this. I'm convinced that most adults, when travelling alone in a car, have a favourite driving CD of choice and sing along to it quite seriously, giving it as much attitude and effort as they can, due to believing – in that instant – that they're the latest rock or pop god playing to a packed Wembley stadium. And there must be at least one man, one poor beleaguered City worker, who likes to pop into a phone box then come out pretending he's Superman. Is there someone who does this? Anyone? If so, I'd like to meet you and we shall marry in the spring (unless you're really, really weird and the Superman thing is all you do, in which case BACK OFF).

Sometimes our need clouds our ability to develop perspective. Being needy is kind of like losing your keys. You become desperate and search everywhere. You search in places you know damn well what you are looking for could never be. The more frantic you become in trying to find them the less rational you are in your search. The less rational you become the more likely you'll be searching in a way that actually makes finding what you want more difficult. You go back again and again to where you want them to be, knowing that there is no way in hell that they are there. There is a lot of wasted effort. You lose perspective of your real goal, let's say it's go to the grocery store, and instead of getting what you need -nourishment, you frantically chase your tail growing more and more confused and angry and desperate. You are mad at your keys, you are mad at your coat pockets for not doing their job. You are irrational. You could just grab the spare set, run to the grocery store and get what you need, have a sandwich, calm down and search at your leisure. But you don't. Where ARE your keys?! Your desperation is skewing your judgement. But you need to face it, YOUR keys are not in HIS pocket. You know your keys are not there. You have checked several times. They are not there. He is not responsible for your keys. You are. He doesn't want to be responsible for your keys. Here's the secret: YOU don't want to be responsible for your keys. If you did you would be searching for them in places they actually have a chance of being. Straight boys don't have your keys. You have tried this before. They may have acted like they did because they wanted you to get them somewhere or you may have hoped they did because you didn't want to go alone but straight boys don't have your keys. Straight boys will never have your keys. Where do you really want to go? It sounds like not far. If going somewhere was of importance you would have hung your keys on the nail by the door. Sometimes it's pretty comfortable at home. Lonely but familiar. Messy enough to lose your keys in but not messy enough to actually bother to clean house and let things go. Not so messy that you can't forget about really going somewhere and sit down awhile and think about taking a trip with that cute guy from work. Just a little while longer, you tell yourself. His girlfriend can sit in the backseat as long as she stays quiet. It will be fun. Just what you need. And really isn't it much safer to sit there and think about taking a trip than accepting all the responsibility of planning one and servicing the car so that it's ready and capable? Having a relationship consists of exposing yourself to someone else over and over, doing the work and sometimes failing. It entails being wrong in front of someone else and being right for someone too. Even if you do find a relationship that other guy doesn't want to be your chauffeur. He wants to take turns riding together. He may occasionally drive but you'll have to do some too. You will have to do some solo driving to keep up your end of the relationship. Boyfriends aren't meant to take you where you want to go. Sometimes they want to take a left when you want to go right. Being in a relationship is embarking on an uncertain adventure. It's not a commitment to a destination it is just a commitment to going together. Maybe it's time to stop telling yourself that you are a starcrossed traveler and admit you're an armchair adventurer. You don't really want to go anywhere or you would venture out. If you really wanted to know where your keys were you'd search in the most likely spot, down underneath the cushion of that chair you've gotten so comfortable in.

Mis dolencias aparecen de forma traicionera, nunca se sabe cuándo. Algo sucede en mi cuerpo, y lo primero que me duelen son los huesos. Es un dolor desagradable, empalagoso y constante. No desaparece durante horas, y a veces ni siquiera durante días. No es posible esconderse de este dolor, no hay ni pastillas ni inyecciones para calmarlo. Tiene que hacerme daño, igual que un río está obligado a fluir y el fuego a arder. Me recuerda cruelmente que estoy hecha de efímeras partículas materiales que se desgastan a cada segundo. ¿Podría acostumbrarme a él? Vivir como viven las personas en las ciudades de Oswiecim -la Auschwitz nazi- o Hiroshima, sin pensar en absoluto en lo que ocurrió anteriormente allí. Simplemente viven. Al dolor de huesos le siguen el dolor de estómago, de intestino, de hígado, de todo lo que tenemos dentro. Un dolor persistente, que solo la glucosa es capaz de atenuar parcialmente, por lo que siempre llevo unas ampollas en mis bolsillos. Nunca sé cuándo puedo sufrir un ataque, cuándo voy a sentirme peor. A veces tengo la impresión de que estoy construida únicamente con síntomas de enfermedad, de que soy un fantasma hecho de dolor. Cuando no consigo reponerme, imagino que en el estómago, desde el cuello hasta el perineo, tengo una cremallera y que la voy abriendo lentamente, de arriba abajo. Y después saco las manos de las manos, las piernas de las piernas y la cabeza de la cabeza. Salgo de mi propio cuerpo y este cae como un montón de ropa vieja. Soy pequeña y delicada, casi transparente. Mi cuerpo es como el de una medusa: blanco, lechoso, fosforescente. Solo esa fantasía es capaz de proporcionarme cierto alivio. Me ayuda a liberarme también.

Se vieron el sábado siguiente y todos los demás sábados de otoño, con Ferguson desplazándose en autobús desde Nueva Jersey hasta la terminal de Port Authority y cogiendo luego la línea IRT del metro hasta la calle Setenta y dos Oeste, donde se apeaba para luego caminar tres manzanas en dirección norte y otras dos en dirección oeste hasta el piso de los Schneiderman en Riverside Drive esquina con la Setenta y cinco, apartamento 4B, que se había convertido en la dirección más importante de la ciudad de Nueva York. Salidas a diversos sitios, casi siempre los dos solos, de vez en cuando con amigos de Amy, cine extranjero en el Thalia de Broadway esquina con la calle Noventa y cinco, Godard, Kurosawa, Fellini, visitas al Met, al Frick, al Museo de Arte Moderno, los Knicks en el Garden, Bach en el Carnegie Hall, Beckett, Pinter y Ionesco en pequeños teatros del Village, todo muy cerca y a mano, y Amy siempre sabía adónde ir y qué hacer, la princesa guerrera de Manhattan le enseñaba cómo orientarse por la ciudad, que rápidamente llegó a convertirse en su ciudad también. No obstante, pese a todas las cosas que hacían y todo lo que veían, lo mejor de aquellos sábados era sentarse a charlar en las cafeterías, la primera serie de incesantes diálogos que continuarían durante años, conversaciones que a veces se convertían en feroces discusiones cuando sus puntos de vista diferían, la buena o mala película que acababan de ver, la acertada o desacertada idea política que uno de ellos acababa de expresar, pero a Ferguson no le importaba discutir con ella, no le interesaban las chicas facilonas, las pánfilas llenas de mohínes que sólo perseguían imaginarios ritos amorosos, eso era amor de verdad, complejo, hondo y lo bastante flexible para albergar la discordia apasionada, y cómo no podría amar a aquella chica, con su implacable y penetrante mirada y su risa inmensa, retumbante, la excitable e intrépida Amy Schneiderman, que un día iba a ser corresponsal de guerra, revolucionaria o doctora entregada a los pobres. Tenía dieciséis años, casi diecisiete. La pizarra vacía ya no lo estaba tanto, pero aún era lo bastante joven para saber que podía borrar las palabras ya escritas, suprimirlas y empezar de nuevo siempre que su espíritu la impulsara a ello.

I went whenever I wasn’t working, either luring Shelby along with promises of onion rings and milkshakes, or otherwise flying solo, snagging Soledad’s car for the night and making the drive to the water with all the windows rolled down, humming softly out of tune.

Feel the beat. It is the wind,” A’isha directed. “Fly with it.” The soft beat of a drum, paired with the lilting melody of a flute, filled the room as Danica stepped onto the dais at the back of the nest. Closing her eyes, Danica stretched upward, moving onto the balls of her feet, wrists crossed high above her head, and paused there for a heartbeat. The pose was known as a prayer--a dancer’s call for guidance from the powers that be. She moved into the dance flawlessly, the sway of her body as fluid as water over stone. This was the magic of the serpent and the snake charmer combined, as pure and intense as a thunderstorm. The first dance was soft and gentle, a common sakkri’nira. I could feel the drive in the music, however, and knew the moment when the first dance would move into a more complex one. When the flute stilled, Danica rose once again onto the balls of her feet for an instant. She smiled at me before she began the most complex of the intre’marl: Maeve’s solo from the Namir-da. What had been praise and beauty became passion. Maeve’s dance was a seduction, and the way Danica held my eyes made me feel it. Seeing my mate perform those steps made me want to join her, as any royal-born serpiente would. The holiday for which the Namir-da had been named was still four months away; she would be able to perform then, and I with her, in a ritual that dated back to the creation of my kind.

The bar/restaurant was still open, and there was some kind of forgettable baseball game featured there, on the large screen, with no one watching, and you could see this from the uninhabited and threadbare lobby. The young man at the front desk looked like there was no sorrow he had not experienced, and you could imagine that the pariahs of Waterbury - the convicted frauds and disgraced politicians, the collectors of serial-killer memorabilia, the embezzlers of church donations, those found guilty of exposing themselves, the mortuary assistants with suppressed necrophiliac tendencies, the sadistic gym teachers and embittered traffic cops - all settled here when they were in search of the loneliest night imaginable, and nothing made them feel better than exceedingly loud smoove playing in the lobby. If you were experiencing catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia, some flügelhorn soloing just might do the trick, could render you functionally unconscious in that way that hotel life can often do, unaware of any aspect of civilization that involves continuity, stability, devotion. However, it's also possible that smoove could be seen as a music that requires absolute submission to the American economy, to the need to buy and consume, and, as such, it is straight out of the robber-baron playbook, the music that can and must drive you to your knees so that you can do nothing but purchase plastic trinkets of Southeast Asian manufacture.

FLETCHER: The truth is I don’t think people understand what it is I did at Shaffer. I wasn’t there to conduct. Any idiot can move his hands and keep people in tempo. No, it’s about pushing people beyond what’s expected of them. And I believe that is a necessity. Because without it you’re depriving the world of its next Armstrong. Its next Parker. Why did Charlie Parker become Charlie Parker, Andrew? ANDREW: Because Jo Jones threw a cymbal at him. FLETCHER: Exactly. Young kid, pretty good on the sax, goes up to play his solo in a cutting session, fucks up -- and Jones comes this close to slicing his head off for it. He’s laughed off-stage. Cries himself to sleep that night. But the next morning, what does he do? He practices. And practices and practices. With one goal in mind: that he never ever be laughed off-stage again. A year later he goes back to the Reno, and he plays the best motherfucking solo the world had ever heard. Now imagine if Jones had just patted young Charlie on the head and said “Good job.” Charlie would’ve said to himself, “Well, shit, I did do a good job,” and that’d be that. No Bird. Tragedy, right? Except that’s just what people today want. The Shaffer Conservatories of the world, they want sugar. You don’t even say “cutting session” anymore, do you? No, you say “jam session”. What the fuck kind of word is that? Jam session? It’s a cutting session, Andrew, this isn’t fucking Smucker’s. It’s about weeding out the best from the worst so that the worst become better than the best. I mean look around you. $25 drinks, mood lighting, a little shrimp cocktail to go with your Coltrane. And people wonder why jazz is dying. Take it from me, and every Starbucks jazz album only proves my point. There are no two words more harmful in the entire English language than “good job”.

A driving granny, on a solo mission to see her grandson in the big city, this is getting better by the minute.

Normally, an album with Crazy Horse would have meant a tour with them, but much to the surprise of Jeff Blackburn and his band members (former Moby Grape bassist Bob Mosley and drummer Johnny Craviotto), Young began rehearsing with them instead. In early July, the newly renamed Ducks, after a duck’s landing they saw in town, played its first shows—in local bars in Santa Cruz. In what the Santa Cruz Sentinel called “the worst-kept secret in town,” the Ducks would drive to a club and ask the opening act for their slot (“They were fine—they knew they couldn’t draw what we could,” says Mosley). Charging only a few dollars for admission, they would tear through sets of songs by Young and by Blackburn. Young debuted new material like “Sail Away” and “Comes a Time” in more electrified versions than were later heard on record. “It was unfathomable,” recalls Mosley. “Some of the guitar solos took me into outer space. It was incredible shit.” Starting in mid-July and ending around Labor Day, the Ducks would play more than twenty

The good news for the national team, at least, was that now the distraction of Solo’s legal issues was in the past and the team could focus on the Women’s World Cup, which was now only a few months away. But that didn’t quite happen. On January 19, 2015, Solo made headlines again. She was at the national team’s annual January camp outside of Los Angeles when she allowed her visiting husband, Jerramy Stevens, to drive a U.S. Soccer–rented car. Stevens had been drinking and was pulled over after police allegedly saw the car swerving off the road. Stevens was arrested on DUI charges, and Solo, who was the passenger, was reported to have been “belligerent” toward the arresting officers. The federation didn’t know about the incident until celebrity tabloid TMZ reported the news. After the federation had been slammed by the media for not punishing Solo throughout the episode surrounding her arrest, there was little choice this time. Solo was suspended from the team for 30 days. Her suspension was scheduled to end about four months before the World Cup was set to start.

Nothing like a solo car concert at night during the drive home.

Perciò la morte dovrebbe farci gioire. Erano questi i miei pensieri mentre cantavo, ma in fondo non ho mai creduto a una distribuzione personale della Luce. Nessun Signore Iddio se ne occuperà, nessun contabile celeste. Un unico individuo potrebbe difficilmente sopportare tanta sofferenza, soprattutto se è onnisciente, credo che andrebbe in pezzi sotto il peso di questo dolore, a meno che non si sia già munito di certi meccanismi di difesa, come l'Uomo. Solo una macchina sarebbe in grado di sopportare tutto il dolore del mondo. Solo un congegno semplice, efficace e giusto. Ma dal momento che tutto dovrebbe accadere meccanicamente, allora le nostre preghiere sono superflue.

Tardaría años en comprender lo que significaba para mi padre conducir aquel coche. De niña solo podía intuirlo: la liberación que sentía al ponerse al volante, el placer que le causaba tener un motor eficiente y unos neumáticos perfectamente equilibrados zumbando debajo de él.