Brian D'Ambrosio Quotes

Life,
perhaps less a document than an impression,
conveyed through partial glances,
stream-of-consciousness juxtapositions,
unpredictable rhythms,
a collage of sound,
a conscientious diarist,
a career of blackmail and scandal culminated in murder,
a blind man with a will of iron and a nervous system of gossamer.

Boxing encompasses the very worst and very best of human nature and its beautiful brutality is a marvelous contradiction for a writer. It conjures up so many irreconcilably antagonistic feelings.

The lonely, wistful revisionism of memories is as gratingly repetitive as snow and ice in Canada. I avoid them both at all costs - memories and Canada.

Manassa naught,
a padded white envelope
with no return address,
landlocked and antiseptic,
exploited like a gas station.
Beauty
passes through in the briefest of cameos.

Short lives,

bouncing harmlessly as a cloth doll on grandma's lap.

Small helpless states,

pretentiousness garbed in the unintelligible,

makers of disposable art,

the zeal to make a scoop unstoppable,

pacified by fresh news,

of scrabbling sexy movements.

Life is calmness with squabbling,
accumulating traditions and self-consciousness.
elaborate meals, medicine, law,
pretty pictures unspoiled,
rocking the cradle and holding the hammer,
impressive skies of gray and blue,
believing in what we can't settle,
the mystery of iniquity,
the absolutely sincere predictions of fools,
lighter moods like these.

The heart can be a parade of non-sequiturs
always just tenuously around
one of those seething places
that often reeks of sex and moonshine

Happiness is a habit,
it's more than fleeting,
more than a disintegrating lozenge.

On the perfect night there is nothing more transcendent or terrifying than boxing. It's the ultimate representation of the guilty pleasure.

Boxing begins in illusion and ends in real blood and tears. That's what makes it so beautiful.

To be a boxer is to be within yourself, inside your thoughts and feelings.

I've always stressed the value of autonomy for intellectual and moral development. Autonomy provides us with a sphere of discretion which we all require.

I'm a migrant worker picking frozen peas,
and a clodhopper hiding behind a white sheet.
I'm a shootout at Ruby Ridge,
and a freefall of flames.
I am closed for the winter,
and crawling in my playpen.
I am cold,
and quick chatter and beautiful smiles.
I am a man missing a limb,
and lettuce and tomatoes.
I am a palace,
and fresh milk and goat cheese.
I'm the great emptiness among Cubans,
and a job that requires the auditing of truth and lies.
I'm a confounding calm that will shatter fear and complacency,
and a town full of self-defined renegades and recluses.
I'm a public execution,
and a lanky husband waiting by the checkout.

One thing that unites triumphant entrepreneurs, whether in Brooklyn, San Francisco or Great Falls, Montana, is strength of character.Individuality is the goal that we all strive to excel at in some way; the notion that we are distinct, special, that there is something teachable about our wisdom, something remarkable about our outlook.

I never trust a man who tucks in his shirt by choice or neglects coffee in favor of tea.

Boxing is the most extreme metaphor of personal liability – you enter the ring alone and compete the same way.

The heart can be anguished
arrogant
even silly
milling about comically
rejecting fake decorum
it comes from a repressive family
that disapproves of its child's chosen profession

Pay phones,
relics of an almost-vanished landscape,
always a touch of seediness and sadness,
and a sense of transience,
sweaty phones used by men outside maternity wards,
feeding them fistfuls of change.

Mornings are cool like a spy,
cool like a rebel,
cool like a rhetorical street fighter,
cool like an unfilled spot where wit and joy once stood,
cool like the man who can make productive use of his demons,
cool like the deciphered eccentricities of good friends,
cool like the later protest-and-psychedelic era.

Endings are thus formally unappealing to me, more than beginning or ending, in life, I enjoy continuing. Continuing is my only focus or concern.

Trying to change someone only makes them cling to their existing behavior with brutish, primal force.

Old and cold. High rates of suicide and prescription drug abuse. Look at the inbred faces at the grocery stores and coffee shops, the exercise-deficient kids, the routinized state workers, the sun-deprived adults and isolated third and fourth generation sad cases who've never experienced a meal outside of Lewis and Clark County. Make no mistake; Helena, Montana is old and cold and the rigid, sick antithesis of living.

After you have seasoned your gloves with the blood, sweat and tears of your opponents, all else is anticlimactic.

In these shallow arroyos
and grease-covered hills,
blowing dust zones,
the Christmas spirit of cotton bales,
fried in butter
and sweeping heat,
life,
spaciously allotted.
Catching our breath,
smiling in silence,
with the lowering sun in our faces.

Needless to say, I personally don't believe fighting should be banned. I don't understand why a relatively small segment of the hockey world feels obligated to ban extracurricular combat when it's so popular elsewhere in American sports. Additionally, the league shouldn't be trying to ban fighting to save the enforcers from hurting themselves. Fighters realize the risks associated with what they do, and they are bound to accept these risks.

Heart resides
where crumbling churches give way to blossoming trees
empty storefronts to towering mansions
it doesn't want just another heist movie
or an illusion of cleavage
it's not accidental or meaningless
it wants to be known

Simplicity matters. Especially when it comes to the muscle memory of boxing. That is perhaps rule number one. Simplicity works. Simplicity is repetition. Repetition is function. Boil function down to one action, maybe two. Left or right. Simplicity. Simplicity is really the hardest thing.