Jeff Zentner Quotes

Remember that Florida is a land of weirdos and bizarre happenings, and conduct yourselves accordingly. ~ Jeff Zentner

Stick to the key of C, dude. No sharps or flats. More forgiving. ~ Jeff Zentner

Don't think that way," my mom says. "We need to think positively."
How's this: I am positively fucked. ~ Jeff Zentner

We live in a series of moments and seasons and sense memories, strung end to end to form a sort of story. ~ Jeff Zentner

I wake up one day and it's twenty-plus years later, and here I am still. That's getting left behind. And even then, you can have a decent life. You know why I'm still here? It's because I'm content. Maybe even happy. I found my path. My life is simple. I wake up in the morning. I eat my Cheerios, drink my coffee, think my thoughts. I go home after work and sit on my back patio and pet my dog and listen to music and myself breathing. It feels good to be alive and exist. Most things haven't worked out for me - especially love - but that's all right. I'm not as pretty as I used to be. More of my life's behind me than in front of me. Who knows how many years I took off it while I was partying. But I'm a lot healthier now, if you can believe it.
"I get lonely sometimes, but so does everyone else. We're all looking for some sort of salvation in something sometimes we try to find it in people. We find out salvation, and it slips through our fingers. We find it again. We get left behind. Living is hurting, but I'll take living over the alternative any day. Consciousness is a marvelous gift. It took almost dying to make me realize that. Hell, I'm just rambling now. Anyway, having said all this, you did not get left behind. ~ Jeff Zentner

I watch the tip of my tie sway to and fro and wonder how humans got to a place where we said, "Whoa. Hold on. Before I can take you seriously, you need to hang a brightly colored strip of narrow pointy cloth around your neck. ~ Jeff Zentner

I sometimes look at my bookshelf now and think about how someday I'm going to die without ever reading a lot of the books there. And one might be life-changingly good and I'll never know. ~ Jeff Zentner

How is it every time we're talking about the real world, you manage to bring up fantasy, and every time we're talking about fantasy, you manage to bring up the real world?

Travis shrugged. "My fantasies are more interesting than the real world and machines and tools are more interesting than you guys' fantasies. ~ Jeff Zentner

I'm tired of watching children perish. I'm tired of watching the world grind up gentle people. I'm tired of outliving those I shouldn't be outliving. I've made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery. I needed to say that out loud to somebody other than my cats. Please take care of yourselves, my young friends. ~ Jeff Zentner

Funny how people move through this world leaving little pieces of their story with the people they meet, for them to carry. Makes you wonder what'd happen if all those people put their puzzle pieces together. ~ Jeff Zentner

My whole family used to watch reruns of Walker, Texas Ranger. And I loved it when Walker would kick butt."
"As opposed to what? When Walker would hold forth on quantum physics? When he would write haikus? When he would interpret Bach on the harpischord? That show is an infomercial for Chuck Norris kicking people through plate-glass windows in show motion."
"So you've seen it. ~ Jeff Zentner

Writing is something that you can learn only by doing. To become a writer, you need an imagination, which you clearly have. You need to read books, which you clearly do. And you need to write, which you don't yet do, but should. ~ Jeff Zentner

I've made books my life because they let me escape this world of cruelty and savagery. ~ Jeff Zentner

Everything ends. Some things last longer than others, but everything end. Childhood feels like it takes forever when you're in the midst of it, but one day you wake up and you're eighteen and going to college. The basset hound puppy with the bow around his neck? You're going to see his whole life pass. You may find someone you love and get married. And it might last a long time, but it ends one way or another. Maybe you'll be together for fifty or sixty years, but one of you is going to get left behind.I'm glad things end, though. It forces you to love them ferociously while you have them. There's nothing worth having that doesn't die. ~ Jeff Zentner

She got up , walked around the table, and gave him a lingering hug, running her fingers through the back of his hair. She'd been finding more excuses to hug him lately.

"What was that for?" Dill asked.

"Because you looked like your heart stepped on a Lego. ~ Jeff Zentner

The day may come when it takes some discernment to tell when someone loves you for you and when someone wants to stand near your fire. ~ Jeff Zentner

Sometimes, though, you want to remember every minute you spent with someone. You want to remember even the most mundane moments. You wish you had inhabited them more completely, and marked them with yourself more indelibly - not in spite of their ordinariness, but because of it. But you only discover this when it's too late ~ Jeff Zentner

If you're going to live, you might as well do painful, brave, and beautiful things. ~ Jeff Zentner

His mother was quiet for a moment. "I get out of bed every day because I never know where I'll meet with one of God's small graces. Maybe I'll be cleaning a room and find a dollar bill. Maybe I'll be at the gas station on a slow night, and I'll get to sit and be paid to watch the sun set. Or maybe I just won't hurt much that day. What a miracle each day is. To see the spirit of God move across the face of our lives like he did the waters in the darkness of creation. ~ Jeff Zentner

She's it. She's my everything. She's the standard by which I'll judge beauty for the rest of my life. I'll measure every touch to her breath on my skin. Every voice to her voice. Every mind to her mind. My measure of perfection. The name carved into me. If I could, I would lie with her under these stars until my heart burst. ~ Jeff Zentner

I think if what you'd do for your last day on Earth doesn't look like a pretty normal day for you, you probably need to reexamine your life. ~ Jeff Zentner

You're telling someone in a wheelchair 'Walking is awesome. You should get up and walk.' It's not that easy. ~ Jeff Zentner

No one knows how anybody lives through anything. People just do. ~ Jeff Zentner

No one ever says on their deathbed they wish they'd loved fewer people. ~ Jeff Zentner

I guess guilt doesn't sleep, it only eats. ~ Jeff Zentner

Some fall in glorious ways. One green fields of battle as old warriors, surrounded by friends, fighting for their homes, fighting cruelty.

Some fall crawling in the dirt of Forrestville, Tennessee, in the dark, impossibly young and alone, for no good reason at all. ~ Jeff Zentner

Irrationality loves company. ~ Jeff Zentner

Weird how we're programmed to get pleasure from destroying ourselves. ~ Jeff Zentner

The worst days spent with her were better than the best days spent without her. ~ Jeff Zentner

Nothing makes you feel more naked than someone identifying a desire you never knew you possessed. ~ Jeff Zentner

But the thing with a best friend is that you're never talking about nothing. Even when you're talking about nothing, it's something. The times when you think you're talking about nothing, you're actually talking about how you have someone with whom you can talk about nothing, and it's fine. ~ Jeff Zentner

I want you to be careful in this world. My heart is wrapped up in you. ~ Jeff Zentner

I start laughing right there in line, laughing like I did then.
Like I did so many times.
Some days-the good ones-this is how they visit me. ~ Jeff Zentner

I should wait. I don't want to come off as a weirdo. But also I'm now keenly aware of how important it is to tell people what you want them to know while you can. ~ Jeff Zentner

I wish it would rain. Torrents. So hard it would cleanse me of worry and trouble; so hard it would lift the stain of death from me and carry it to the rivers and out the sea. ~ Jeff Zentner

The fights begin. We're into it ironically at first, but then start genuinely having fun trying to top each other yelling stuff. We get looks, but so what?
"Make him feel like every day is Monday!" Delia shouts.
"Embarrass him in front of everyone he's ever loved!" I shout.
"Dip your hands in his blood!" Delia shouts.
"Send him back to school to get his degree in computer science!" I shout.
"Show him how angry you are that stuff that's supposed to smell like green tea doesn't smell like green tea!" Delia shouts.
"Okay, that one was a stretch," I say. ~ Jeff Zentner

Here's where stories come in. They tell us the truth of other people's lives. They shine a light on shared humanity. They make us understand that we are different, but not 'different'. That our differences are something that makes the human tapestry richer and more colorful, and not a threat. ~ Jeff Zentner

People live quiet lives and that's okay. There's dignity in that, no matter what you may think. ~ Jeff Zentner

Grief is weird. It seems to come in these waves out of nowhere. One minute I'm standing in the ocean, fine. The next minute I'm drowning. ~ Jeff Zentner

It's comforting to know that you don't have to be excellent to not be completely forgotten. ~ Jeff Zentner

Our memories of our loved ones are the pearl we form around the grain of grief that causes us pain. ~ Jeff Zentner

Because we should do things we're afraid of. It makes it easier every time we do it. ~ Jeff Zentner

For the most part, you don't hold the people you love in your heart because they rescued you from drowning or pulled you from a burning house. Mostly you hold them in your heart because they save you, in a million quiet and perfect ways, from being alone. ~ Jeff Zentner

We are a fallen species, spitting on the gift of salvation. Humanity is irredeemable. ~ Jeff Zentner

Now I'm standing here, writing the final chapter of my son's portion of the history of my life. I never imagined that my history would include the full history of my son, start to finish. But it does now. ~ Jeff Zentner

There are books stacked high around them - the way opportunity and possibility are stacked around them. ~ Jeff Zentner

My mind twirls with mysteries. The eternities. Life. Death. I can't stop it. It's like staring in the mirror for too long or saying your name too many times and becoming disconnected from any sense of yourself. I begin to wonder if I'm even still alive; if I exist. ~ Jeff Zentner

Should we continue to serve people as a mass now that we can serve and connect them as individuals? ~ Jeff Jarvis

If you double the number of experiments you do per year you're going to double your inventiveness. ~ Jeff Bezos

Take Time To Think ~ Jeff Yalden

Donald Trump foreign policy speech got good reviews, and it says we're going to defeat the people who are direct threats to us, but we're going to be a lot more cautious about getting involved in long-term, Wilsonian adventures. ~ Jeff Sessions

I hesitated for just a moment. Some part of me wanted to see the creature, after having heard it for so many days. Was it the remnants of the scientist in me, trying to regroup, trying to apply logic when all that mattered was survival? If so, it was a very small part. I ran. ~ Jeff VanderMeer

The basic idea of a portfolio life is that instead of thinking of your work as a monolithic activity, what if you chose to see it as the complex group of interests, passions, and activities it is? ~ Jeff Goins

If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful. ~ Jeff Bezos

Fone Bone: HOLD IT! Thorn thinks Gran'ma Ben can help us get back to Boneville!
Phoney Bone: IT'S NOT WORTH IT! LET GO OF ME!
Fone Bone: Would you wait a minute?!! We can explain everything!
Phoney Bone: HELP! HELP! They've destroyed my cousin's brain!! OH MY GOSH! THey've already milked you haven't they?!! ~ Jeff Smith

I tried real hard to play golf, and I was so bad at it they would have to check me for ticks at the end of the round because I'd spent about half the day in the woods. ~ Jeff Foxworthy

I worked for Jeff Kelin. He was a marketing genius before his time. Coupons, car rebates and the value meal (as we know it today) all came from his marketing genius. At 19 years old, I had two jobs, one with Andy Warhol, and the second with Jeff Kelin. ~ Steve Kaufman

Don't think you can ... know you can! Your human body is the most impressive tool that you will ever own. Even if you can't control everything ... you can always control something. Your body - Use it ... Amuse it ... because one day ... you're going to lose it. ~ Jeff Hardy

After each performance of an Austin Shakespeare production, audiences are invited to stay for a ten-minute discussion of the work. And this tradition continues in our New York run. ~ Jeff Britting

You were stalwart. ~ Jeff Hirsch

You might be a redneck if you missed 5th grade graduation because you had jury duty. ~ Jeff Foxworthy

Voters are saying "I like this guy [Donald Trump]. He just might shake this place up." ~ Jeff Sessions

If you ever meet someone who thinks they are so special, the best thing to do is smile. You don't have to say anything. Be friendly and then go do
your best. That will make you special, too! ~ Jeff Hutchins

Data really powers everything that we do. ~ Jeff Weiner

Is there anyone out there who is the next Steve Jobs? I think Jeff Bezos is pretty close. He is very smart. He is extremely creative. He has completely reinvented the way in which commerce is done online. ~ John Sculley

Among the early commercial adopters of wild beer were the Cottonwood Brewery of Boone, North Carolina, and Joe's Brewery of Champaign, Illinois. Brewer John Isenhour gained a "cult status" for his production of beers with a lambic profile in the mid-1990s using wild yeast and bacteria that he kept active at various stages of the lambic fermentation cycle. John quite successfully marketed the "Lambic" to his rather conservative clientele in this central Illinois college town as "Belgian lemonade. ~ Jeff Sparrow

If you think 'loading the dishwasher' means 'getting your wife drunk', you might be a redneck ~ Jeff Foxworthy

answered the phone; it was, in fact, the Times - the Los Angeles one. Jackie took the call, and by the time I could get unhooked from my homicidal seat belt and turned around to look, there was nothing to see except the usual mad, gleaming pack of angry, overpowered vehicles. I scanned in all directions a couple of times, but I saw no cycles, and I heard no more popping backfire sounds. So I shrugged it off before we were even halfway to work, and thought no more about motorcycles. ~ Jeff Lindsay

First things first has always been my motto, mostly because it makes absolutely no sense - after all, if first things were second or third, they wouldn't be first things, would they? Still, cliches exist to comfort the feeble minded, not to provide any actual meaning. ~ Jeff Lindsay

I'm going to go do this crazy thing. I'm going to start this company selling books online. ~ Jeff Bezos

At the end of the movie all of us have this shared redemption. ~ Jeff Goldblum

I've met some smart people doing security work in the government, and they're starting to reach out to a broader audience, which I think is a good thing. ~ Jeff Moss

I think for one thing, kids are a lot smarter now then we ever were. ~ Jeff Foxworthy

The problem is that the pressure to disprove a stereotype changes what you are about in a situation. It gives you an additional task. In addition to learning new skills, knowledge, and ways of thinking in a schooling situation, or in addition to trying to perform well in a workplace like the women in the high-tech firms, you are also trying to slay a ghost in the room, the negative stereotype and its allegation about you and your group. You are multitasking, and because the stakes involved are high--survival and success versus failure in an area that is important to you--this multitasking is stressful and distracting.

...And when you realize that this stressful experience is probably a chronic feature of the stetting for you, it can be difficult for you to stay in the setting, to sustain your motivation to succeed there. Disproving a stereotype is a Sisyphean task; something you have to do over and over again as long as your are in the domain where the stereotype applies. Jeff seemed to feel this way about Berkeley, that he couldn't find a place there where he could be seen as belonging. When men drop out of quantitative majors in college, it is usually because they have bad grades. But when women drop out of quantitative majors in college it usually has nothing to do with their grades. The culprit, in their case, is not their quantitative skills but, more likely, the prospect of living a significant portion of their lives in a domain where they may forever have t ~ Claude M. Steele

Agile DevOps Cloud computing Design thinking These practices all share a cybernetic model of control. This ~ Jeff Sussna

It's mysterious what attracts you to a person. ~ Jeff Goldblum

It seems that the concealed carry policy now in effect in 30 states is unfair to goblins. They cannot tell who is armed and who is not, and when their intended victim shoots back it hurts their feelings - along with other things. ~ Jeff Cooper

Sometimes I look like I was under interrogation. Some people just don't look good in clothes. In New York, Armani and all those clothing people used to call me up and tried to pay me not to wear their clothes. This is as good as it's going to get ... and then it's all downhill. I'll be fine. I never feel as bad as I look. ~ Jeff Van Gundy

Any job that posts a price list for your body parts is a bad job. ~ Jeff Foxworthy

It is a well-worn truth that cops grow callous, a cliché so tattered that it is even common on television. All cops face things every day that are so gruesome, brutal, and bizarre that no normal human being could deal with them on a daily basis and stay sane. And so they learn not to feel, to grow and maintain a poker-faced whimsy toward all the surprising things their fellow humans find to do to each other. All cops practice not-feeling, and it may be that Miami cops are better at it than others, since they have so many opportunities to learn. ~ Jeff Lindsay

Bodies could be beacons, too, Saul knew. A lighthouse was a fixed beacon for a fixed purpose; a person was a moving one. But people still emanated light in their way, still shone across the miles as a warning, an invitation, or even just a static signal. People opened up so they became a brightness, or they went dark. They turned their light inward sometimes, so you couldn't see it, because they had no other choice. ~ Jeff VanderMeer

Mr. Beaconsfield is the Year Eleven drama teacher. He's one of those teachers who likes being "down with the kids" - all gelled hair and "call me Jeff."He's also the reason our version of Romeo and Juliet is set in a Brooklyn ghetto and Juliet is leaning out of a trailer rather than a balcony. ~ Zoe Sugg

Can a little speck in the vast universe truly address the Infinite? The answer is that Prayer is precisely what converts that little speck into an entity of inestimable and cosmic significance. ~ Jeff Cohen

He believed a kind of fragmentation had crept into people's minds in the modern era. ~ Jeff VanderMeer

I love the ocean. Boats, not so much. ~ Jeff Goldblum

One in four kids in the U.S. faces hunger. ~ Jeff Bridges

Basically [I become a Republican], pretty early. I had an English teacher that got me to subscribe to the National Review. ~ Jeff Sessions

Always code as if the guy who ends up maintaining your code will be a violent psychopath who knows where you live. --John Woods comp.lang.c++ ~ Jeff Knupp

Seek instant gratification - or the elusive promise of it - and chances are you'll find a crowd there ahead of you. ~ Jeff Bezos

I always found the concept of a tortured artist distasteful. ~ Jeff Tweedy

Second, the facility at Guantanamo Bay is necessary to national security. ~ Jeff Miller

I love marriage. ~ Jeff Bridges

I like my drawings to be direct. I don't generally work on them for too long, but that doesn't mean that they are not works in their own right. ~ Jeff Koons

I just hope that theaters remain. I think there's something very wonderful about getting into a dark room with a bunch of people. There's something cool about that. Brings us all together in one room where we can experience all those emotions. ~ Jeff Bridges