Focus Quotes

I don’t want to make somebody else. I want to make myself.

Saturday, May 1st, 2010
girl and mirrors

“You ain’t been in this house ten seconds and already you starting something.”

“Takes two, Big Mamma.”

“Well, don’t let your mouth start nothing that your ass can’t…”

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If I were to try to read, much less answer, all the attacks made on me, this shop might as well be closed for any other business

Friday, February 12th, 2010
Lincoln monument

I do the very best I know how – the very best I can; and I mean to keep doing so until the end. If the end brings me out all right, what is said against me won’t amount to anything. If the end brings me out wrong, ten angels…

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It’s the job that’s never started as takes longest to finish

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010
old home

I’ve often wanted to see a bit of magic like what it tells of in old tales, but I’ve never heard of a better land than this. It’s like being at home and on a holiday at the same time, if you understand me. I don’t want to leave. All the same, I’m…

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Brick walls are there for a reason. They give us a chance to show how badly we want something.

Friday, January 1st, 2010
brick wall

“Be supportive,” my mom said. “If you love her, support her.”

And so I did that. I spent that week teaching, hanging out in an office up the hall from Jai. I stopped by a couple of times, however, just to see if she was all right. “I just…

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You leave your elephant at home and look for its footprints in the forest

Saturday, December 12th, 2009
fog

In Tibet we used to say, “Knowing one, you accomplish all.” The modern faddish idea that we can always keep all our options open and so never need commit ourselves to anything is one of the greatest and most dangerous delusions of our…

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My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them

Friday, September 4th, 2009
a continually conscious mask

Why? I do not know anymore really what I thought then. Push. Analyze. Hold it…

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The truth knocks on the door and you say, “Go away, I’m looking for truth,” and so it goes away. Puzzling.

Tuesday, September 1st, 2009
country road

I’ve wondered why it took us so long to catch on. We saw it and yet we didn’t see it. Or rather we were trained not to see it. Conned, perhaps, into thinking that the real action was metropolitan and all this was just…

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The power men possess to annoy me, I give them by a weak curiosity

Sunday, August 9th, 2009
stop hand

At times the whole world seems to be in conspiracy to importune you with emphatic trifles. Friend, client, child, sickness, fear, want, charity, all knock at once at thy closet door, and say, “Come out unto us.” But keep the…

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I create problems for myself just so I can get creatively turned on.

Tuesday, June 16th, 2009
shortcake

I don’t create serious problems for myself, but I worry a lot. I try to sweat the small stuff. I figure that if I anticipate the small things as being disasters, I’ll be prepared for the larger, more obvious…

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I will not let fear or anger beat me. I will win.

Thursday, May 14th, 2009
figure skates

Silence. I can hear the rustle of clothing and paper, a cough here and a sniffle there, as the crowd settles.

I am terrified, but I responded to fear as a challenge, the same way I use anger as a challenge – anger at my Mom…

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Sometimes the catastrophic moments in life force you to focus on the immediate

Saturday, May 9th, 2009
daisy

There are no real handbooks on what to do first when you get your diagnosis. No one can tell you how the experience is going to go. In my case, I knew I was not going to die, but I also knew, early on, that my life would never feel or look the same. I remember my…

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