Garth Stein Quotes

But I wondered why they had waited for Eve's illness to make themselves available for companionship. ~ Garth Stein

She died that night. Her last breath took her soul, I saw it in my dream. I saw her soul leave her body as she exhaled, and then she had no more needs, no more reason; she was released from her body, and being released, she continued her journey elsewhere, high in the firmament where soul material gathers and plays out all the dreams and joys of which we temporal beings can barely conceive, all the things that are beyond our comprehension, but even so, are not beyond our attainment if we choose to attain them, and believe that we truly can. ~ Garth Stein

Any problems that may occur have ultimately been caused by you, because you are responsible for where you are and what you are doing there. ~ Garth Stein

I marveled at them both; how difficult it must be to be a person. To constantly subvert your desires. To worry about doing the right thing, rather than doing what is most expedient. At that moment, honestly, I had grave doubts as to my ability to interact on such a level. I wondered if I could ever become the human I hoped to be. ~ Garth Stein

...the race isn't over until the checker flies. ~ Garth Stein

Using a dog as a narrator has limitations and it has advantages. The limitations are that a dog cannot speak. A dog has no thumbs. A dog can't communicate his thoughts except with gestures. ~ Garth Stein

People are always worried about what's happening next. They often find it difficult to stand still, to occupy the now without worrying about the future. People are generally not satisfied with what they have; they are very concerned with what they are going to have. ~ Garth Stein

People and their rituals. They cling to things so hard sometimes. ~ Garth Stein

Eve continued with the inexorable process of dying, Zoe spent too much time with her grandparents, and Denny and I worked at slowing the beating of our hearts so we wouldn't feel so much pain. ~ Garth Stein

Here's why I will be a good person. Because I listen. I cannot speak, so I listen very well. I never interrupt, I never deflect the course of the conversation with a comment of my own. People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another's conversations constantly. It's like having a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street. For instance, if we met a party and I wanted to tell you a story about the time I needed to get a soccer ball in my neighbor's yard but his dog chased me and I had to jump into a swimming pool to escape, and I began telling the story , you, upon hearing the words 'soccer' and 'neighbor' in the same sentence, might interrupt and mention that your childhood neighbor was Pele, the famous soccer player, and I might be courteous and say, Didn't he play for the Cosmos of New York? Did you grow up in New York? And you might reply that no, you grew up in Brazil on the streets of Tres Coracoes with Pele and I might say, I thought you were from Tennessee, and you might say, not originally, and then go on to outline your genealogy at length. So my initial conversational gambit - that I had a funny story about being chased by my neighbor's dog - would be totally lost, and only because you had to tell me all about Pele. Learn to listen! I beg of you. Pretend you are a dog like me and listen to other people rather than steal their stories. ~ Garth Stein

I had always wanted to love Eve as Denny loved her, but I never had because I was afraid. She was my rain. She was my unpredictable element. She was my fear. But a racer should not be afraid of the rain; a racer should embrace the rain. I, alone, could manifest a change around me. By changing my mood, my energy, I allowed Eve to regard me differently. And while I cannot say that I am a master of my own destiny, I can say that I have experienced a glimpse of mastery, and I know what I have to work toward. ~ Garth Stein

It's frustrating for me to be unable to speak. To feel that I have so much to say, so many ways I can help, but I'm locked in a soundproof box, a game show isolation booth from which I can see out and I can hear what's going on, but they never turn on my microphone and they never let me out. It might drive a person mad. It certainly has driven many a dog mad. ~ Garth Stein

In documentary films, you're a storyteller using found objects. You still have to have a story arc and all the elements that make a good story. It really helped me mature as a storyteller. ~ Garth Stein

Success at any endeavor on an elite level demands selfishness. ~ Garth Stein

Oh, my faith has flagged at times. It's easy to fall back into the same routines and paint over the sublime with coat after coat of indifference ... I promise you something: when you have touched the face of God, you can never unlearn what you have learned. You can never unsee what you have seen. ~ Garth Stein

Stories continue in all directions to include even the retelling of the stories themselves, as legend is informed by interpretation, and interpretation is informed by time. ~ Garth Stein

The car goes where the eyes go. ~ Garth Stein

My intent, here, is to tell our story in a dramatically truthful way. While the facts may be less than accurate, please understand that the emotion is true. The intent is true. And, dramatically speaking, intention is everything. ~ Garth Stein

If money affects who you love, then it isn't really love. ~ Garth Stein

To be a champion, you must have no ego at all. You must not exist as a separate entity. You must give yourself over to the race. You are nothing if not for your team, your car, your shoes, your tires. Do not mistake confidence and self-awareness for egotism. ~ Garth Stein

If I went to someone for therapy, I wouldn't be a writer ... I would just be well adjusted. ~ Garth Stein

Grandparents are like that. Grandparents are convinced they're better parents than their own kids, whose lives they've already fucked up. The problem is, grandparents are pains in the ass because they have money ~ Garth Stein

She was my rain. She was my unpredictable element. She was my fear. But a racer should not be afraid of rain; a racer should embrace the rain. ~ Garth Stein

Growing old is a pathetic thing. It is full of limitations and reduction. It happens to us all, I know; but I think that it might not have to. I think it happens to those of us who request it. And in our current mind-set, our collective ennui, it is what we have chosen to do. But one day a mutant child will be born who refuses to age, who refuses to acknowledge the limitations of these bodies of ours, who lives in health until he is done with life, not until his body no longer supports him. He will live for hundreds of years, like Noah. Like Moses. This child's genes will be passed to his offspring, and more like him will follow. And their genetic makeup will supplant the genes of those of us who need to grow old and decay before we die. I believe that one day it will come to pass; however, such a world is beyond my purview. ~ Garth Stein

Your car goes where your eyes go.
Lonliness is unable to survive without a willing host. ~ Garth Stein

Truth, honesty, integrity, he said. "And loyalty. Above truth, honesty, and integrity, I would demand loyalty. Loyalty above all. You have to swear an oath."

"I can never put loyalty above truth honesty and integrity. . . don't demand loyalty over truth. Don't ever do that. ~ Garth Stein

I understood that, as a dog, I could never be as interactive with humanity as I truly desired. Yet, I realized at that moment, I could be something else. I could provide something of need to the people around me. ~ Garth Stein

In the emptiness that was all around me, I noticed an old tennis ball in the plantings; I picked it up and dropped it at Zoë's feet. I didn't know what I was doing, if I had a specific intention. Was I trying to lighten the mood? I don't know, but I felt I had to do something. So there the ball bounced to a stop at her bare feet.
She looked down at the ball but did nothing with it.
Maxwell noticed what I had done, and he noticed Zoë's lack of reaction. He picked up the ball and, with a mighty heave, threw it so far into the woods behind the house that I lost sight of it and could only barely hear it crash through the leaves of bushes on its way back to earth. It was quite an impressive toss, the pale tennis ball sailing through the air against the clear blue sky. What amount of psychic pain was expended on that ball, I had no idea. ~ Garth Stein

The Weather Channel is not about weather; it is about the world! It is about how weather affects us all, our entire global economy, health, happiness, spirit. The channel delves with great detail into weather phenomena of all different kinds - hurricanes, cyclones, tornadoes, monsoons, hail, rain, lightning storms - and they especially delight in the confluence of multiple phenomena. ~ Garth Stein

The race is long. It is better to drive within oneself and finish the race behind the other than it is to drive too hard and crash. ~ Garth Stein

I realized, then, that being an adult was just about bullshitting everyone around you. Just do things until someone stops you from doing those things, and then say, "Oh, that isn't allowed? ~ Garth Stein

That what you manifest is before you ~ Garth Stein

That which you manifest is before you.
The visible becomes inevitable. Your car goes where your eyes go. ~ Garth Stein

That which is around me does not affect my mood; my mood affects that which is around me. ~ Garth Stein

I wanted very badly to have an affinity for something that would become transcendent when I held it in my hands. I don't know that I've ever found that thing; sometimes I suspect I have, but then I doubt myself. Perhaps I'm looking for it still. Perhaps that's what life is about - the search for such a connection. The search for magic. The search for the inexplicable. Not in order to explain it, or contain it. Simply in order to feel it. Because in that recognition of the sublime, we see for a moment the entire universe in the palm of our hand. ~ Garth Stein

If you taught me to read and provided for me the same computer system as someone has provided for Stephen Hawking, I, too, would write great books. And yet you don't teach me to read, and you don't give me a computer stick I can push around with my nose to point at the next letter I wish typed. So whose fault is it that I am what I am? ~ Garth Stein

And it is clear to Evan, now: the difference between what is and what has been done; the present and the past. He sees that what he does and who he is isn't based on the past unless he wants it to be ... No. That is the past, which has been seen differently through many different eyes and has become hazy and unclear, like a pond when stirred with a stick. Only the present moment is clear and free from prejudice. ~ Garth Stein

I've always felt almost human. I've always known that there's something about me that's different than other dogs. Sure, I'm stuffed into a dog's body, but that's just the shell. It's what's inside that's important. The soul. And my soul is very human. ~ Garth Stein

If you feel you don't have enough, you hold on to things," he said. "But if you feel you have enough, you let go of things. ~ Garth Stein

When a dog dies, his soul is released to run until he is ready to be reborn ~ Garth Stein

When I return to the world, I will be a man. I will walk among you. I will lick my lips with my small, dexterous tongue. I will shake hands with other men, grasping firmly with my opposable thumbs. And I will teach all people that I know. And when I see a man or a woman or a child in trouble, I will extend my hand, both metaphorically and physically. I will offer my hand. To him. To her. To you. To the world. I will be a good citizen, a good partner in the endeaver of life that we all share. ~ Garth Stein

The sun rises every day. What is to love? Lock the sun in a box. Force the sun to overcome adversity in order to rise. Then we will cheer! I will often admire beautiful sunrise, but I will never consider the sun a champion for having risen. ~ Garth Stein

You have to reach for things beyond your grasp, or what is heaven for ~ Garth Stein

You can't know what's going to happen before it happens. ~ Garth Stein

They gulped, those stupid birds; they ate from the bag and they swallowed with glee. And they choked on giant mouthfuls of my shit. My shit! Oh, the looks on their faces! The stunned silence. The indignation! The shaking of heads, and then they flew off en masse to the neighbour up the street with the dribbling fountain so they could wash their beaks. ~ Garth Stein

I missed Eve so much I couldn't be a human anymore and feel the pain that humans feel. I had to be an animal again. ~ Garth Stein

I could have grabbed his shirt collar. I could have pulled him close to me, so close he could feel my breath on his skin, and I could have said to him, This is just a crisis. A flash! A single match struck against the implacable darkness of time! You are the one who taught me to never give up. You taught me that new possibilities emerge for those who are prepared, for those who are ready. You have to believe! ~ Garth Stein

Inside each of us resides the truth, the absolute truth. But sometimes the truth is hidden in a hall of mirrors. Sometimes we believe we are viewing the read thing, when in fact we are viewing a facsimile, a distortion ... We too, must shatter the mirrors. We must look into ourselves and root out the distortions until that thing which we know in our hearts is perfect and true, stands before us. Only then will justice be served. ~ Garth Stein

Why can't they see that spiritualism and science are one? That bodies evolve and souls evolve and the universe is a fluid place that marries them both in a wonderful package called a human being. ~ Garth Stein

Gestures are all that I have. ~ Garth Stein

What I have always liked best is when he talks about having no memory. No memory of things he'd done just a second before. Good or bad. Because memory is time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present. In order to reach any success in automobile racing, a driver must never remember. Which is why drivers compulsively record their every move, their every race, with cockpit cameras, in-car video, data mapping; a driver cannot be a witness to his own greatness. This is what Danny says. He says racing is doing. It is being a part of a moment and being aware of nothing else but that moment. Reflection must come at a later time. The great champion Julian Sabella Rosa has said: When I am racing, my mind and my body are working so quickly and so well together, I must be sure not to think, or else I will definitely make a mistake. ~ Garth Stein

Anyone who has a dog knows that they have some very deep thoughts, that they have moods and emotions, they get their feelings hurt. It's not a far reach to give them opinions and values and long-term desires. ~ Garth Stein

How quickly a year passes, like a mouthful of food snatched from the maw of eternity. ~ Garth Stein

The human language, as precise as it is with its thousands of words, can still be so wonderfully vague. ~ Garth Stein

You know," he said, "at some point you're going to realize that being a smart-ass isn't as much about being smart as it is about being an ass." "That's good," I said. "Did you read that in a fortune cookie? ~ Garth Stein

Do not blame other people for being themselves, you will only be frustrated by it. ~ Garth Stein

I suddenly realized. The zebra. It is not something outside of us. The zebra is something inside of us. Our fears. Our own self-destructive nature. The zebra is the worst part of us when we are face-to-face with our worst times. The demon is us! ~ Garth Stein

He is so brilliant. He shines. He's beautiful with his hands that grab things and his tongue that says things and the way he stands and chews his food for so long, mashing it into a paste before he swallows. ~ Garth Stein

To remember is to leave the present. ~ Garth Stein

But I totally understood that what filled us with energy could be irritating to someone else, ~ Garth Stein

It's so hard to communicate because there are so many moving parts. There's presentation and there's interpretation
and they're so dependent on each other it makes things very difficult. ~ Garth Stein

What he offered me is not for me to keep, but for me to give to another. ~ Garth Stein

He never understood, as I did, what she meant when she said that medication would only mask the pain, not make it go away, and what's the point of that. He never understood when she said that if she went to a doctor, the doctor would only invent a disease that would explain why he couldn't help her. And there was so much time between episodes. There was so much hope. ~ Garth Stein

The craft of writing is all the stuff that you can learn through school; go to workshops and read books. Learn characterization, plot and dialogue and pacing and word choice and point of view. Then there's also the art of it which is sort of the unknown, the inspiration, the stuff that is noncerebral. ~ Garth Stein

Demon. Gremlin. Poltergeist. Ghost. Phantom. Spirit. Shadow. Ghoul. Devil. People are afraid of them, so they relegate their existence to stories, volumes of books that can be closed and put on the shelf or left behind at a bed and breakfast; they clench their eyes shut, so they will see no evil. But trust me when I tell you that the zebra is real. Somewhere, the zebra is dancing. ~ Garth Stein

Rain amplifies your mistakes, and water on the track can make your car handle unpredictably. When something unpredictable happens you have to react to it; if you're reacting at speed, you're reacting too late. And so you should be afraid. ~ Garth Stein

I know this much about racing in the rain. I know it is about balance. It is about anticipation and patience ... [it is also] about the mind! It is about owning one's body ... It is about believing that you are not you; you are everything. And everything is you. ~ Garth Stein

We too, must shatter the mirrors. We must look in to ourselves and root out the distortions until that thing which we know in our hearts is perfect and true, stands before us. ~ Garth Stein

I know the truth, and I will tell you now: He was admired, loved, cheered, honored, respected. In life as well as in death. A great man, he is. A great man, he was. A great man he will be. He died that day because his body had served its purpose. His soul had done what it came to do, learned what it came to learn, and then was free to leave. And I knew, as Denny sped me toward the doctor who would fix me, that if I had already accomplished what I set out to accomplish here on earth, if I had already learned what I was meant to learn, I would have left the curb one second later than I had, and I would have been killed instantly by that car. But I was not killed. Because I was not finished. I still had work to do. ~ Garth Stein

I gotta be honest with you ... I hate numbers. I hate chapter numbers. I hate them. ~ Garth Stein

People speak of a will to live. They rarely speak of a will to die. Because people are afraid of death. Death is dark and unknown and frightening. But not for me. It is not the end. ~ Garth Stein

Whether he came from monkeys or fish is unimportant. The important idea is that when the body became "human" enough, the first human soul slipped into it. I ~ Garth Stein

It makes one realize that the physicality if our world is a boundary to us only if our will is weak; a true champion can accomplish things that a normal person would think impossible. ~ Garth Stein

Man's closest relative is not the chimpanzee, as the TV people believe, but is, in fact, the dog. "Enzo"
I admire the female sex. The life makers. It must be amazing to have a body that can carry an entire creature inside. "Enzo ~ Garth Stein

He says racing is doing. It is being a part of a moment and being aware of nothing else but that moment. Reflection must come at a later time. ~ Garth Stein

the result is what people live with, not the cause. ~ Garth Stein

Because memory is time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present. In order to reach any kind of success in automobile racing, a driver must never remember. ~ Garth Stein

I admire the female sex. The life makers. It must be amazing to have a body that can carry an entire creature inside. (I mean, other than a tapeworm, which I've had. That doesn't count as another life, really. That's a parasite and should never have been there in the first place.) ~ Garth Stein

We were both satellites orbiting Denny's sun, struggling for gravitational supremacy. Of course, she had the advantage of her tongue and her thumbs, and when I watched her kiss and fondle him sometimes she would glance at me and wink as if to gloat: Look at my thumbs! See what they can do! ~ Garth Stein

A man who drives a two-thousand-pound car at one hundred seventy miles per hour does not get flustered by the honking of the geese. ~ Garth Stein

Can we not will ourselves to achieve the impossible? Can we not use the power of our life force to change something: one small thing, one insignificant moment, one breath, one gesture? Is there nothing we can do to change what is around us? ~ Garth Stein

Our dog, Comet, is a Lab/poodle mix. She's goofy and silly and sweet. ~ Garth Stein

Children are not chattel. they cannot be given away or traded in the marketplace. ~ Garth Stein

The rain has been incessant. It feeds my soul. I feel that it washes over my body, and a part of me drips into the soil with the rain, and a part of me becomes the soil and is drank into the roots of these trees and I have become one with them. ~ Garth Stein

Gestures are all that I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature. ~ Garth Stein

In Mongolia, when a dog dies, he is buried high in the hills so people cannot walk on his grave. The dog's master whispers in the dog's ear his wishes that the dog will return as a man in his next life. Then his tail is cut off and put beneath his head, and a piece of meat of fat is cut off and placed in his mouth to sustain his soul for its journey; before he is reincarnated, the dog's soul is freed to travel the land, to run across the high desert plains for as long as it would like.
I learned that from a program on the National Geographic Channel, so I believe it is true. Not all dogs return as men, they say; only those who are ready.
I am ready. ~ Garth Stein

People, if you pay attention to them, change the direction of one another's conversations constantly. It's like having a passenger in your car who suddenly grabs the steering wheel and turns you down a side street. ~ Garth Stein

We had a good run, and now it's over; what's wrong with that? ~ Garth Stein

But that day I was anxious. I was nervous and worried, uneasy and distracted. I paced around and never felt settled. I didn't care for the sensation, yet I realized it was possibly a natural progression of my evolving soul, and therefore I tried my best to embrace it. ~ Garth Stein

I'll return your love, " she says."And I won't look at you differently. And I'll always be there to put something under your head so you don't hurt yourself. ~ Garth Stein

Do not mistake confidence and self-awareness for egotism. I ~ Garth Stein

You're scaring the dog, Trish pointed out. She rarely called me by name. They do that in
prisoner of war camps, I've heard. Depersonalization. ~ Garth Stein

One's nature comes from within, not from without. The abomination occurs in subverting one's instinct in favor of a rigid code written by others. Trying to force yourself into a role that confounds your spirit will always break you. ~ Garth Stein

There is no dishonor in losing the race. There is only dishonor in not racing because you are afraid to lose. ~ Garth Stein

Struck by the pain of the ice and the rage of the water below that was forced to make room for the huge piece of frozen time, the glacier, trapped in a solid state for centuries, melting into the ocean and becoming one with its future. She feels small and insignificant in the face of such a display of nature. ~ Garth Stein

Your car goes where your eyes go. Simply another way of saying that which you manifest is before you. ~ Garth Stein

This is something I'd heard him say before: getting angry at another driver for a driving incident is pointless. You need to watch the drivers around you, understand their skill, confidence, and aggression levels, and drive with them accordingly. ~ Garth Stein

These are things that only dogs and women understand because we tap into the pain directly, we connect to pain directly from its source, and so it is at once brilliant and brutal and clear, like white-hot metal spraying out of a fire hose, we can appreciate the aesthetic while taking the worst of it straight in the face. Men, on the other hand, are all filters and deflectors and timed release. ~ Garth Stein

that his gesture was symbolic, as Serena said. But symbolic of ~ Garth Stein

I believe that people were not so allergic to their environment until they began polluting themselves and their world with so many drugs and toxins. ~ Garth Stein