Garth Stein - The Art of Racing in the Rain (2008)

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But what is worse, smelling the roast and not feasting, or not smelling the roast at all?

Garth Stein
People, like dogs, love repetition. Chasing a ball, lapping a course in a race car, sliding down a slide. Because as much as each incident is similar, so it is different.

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
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
Did he understand, as those interminable minutes ticked by, that being alone is not the same as being lonely? That being alone is a neutral state… something that exists only in the mind, not in the world, and, like a virus, is unable to survive without a willing host?

Garth Stein
And I wonder: Have I squandered my dogness? Have I forsaken my nature for my desires? Have I made a mistake by anticipating my future and shunning my present?

Garth Stein
My soul has learned what it came to learn, and all the other things are just things. We can't have everything we want. Sometimes, we simply have to believe.

Garth Stein
To live every day as if it had been stolen from death, that is how I would like to live. To feel the joy of life, as Eve felt the joy of life. To separate oneself from the burden, the angst, the anguish that we all encounter every day. To say I am alive, I am wonderful, I am. I am. That is something to aspire to.

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

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
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
Many of us have convinced ourselves that compromise is necessary to achieve our goals, that all of our goals are not attainable so we should eliminate the extraneous, prioritize our desires, and accept less than the moon.

Garth Stein
Those monkey-thumbs were meant for dogs. Give me my thumbs, you fu**ing monkeys!

Garth Stein
The true hero is flawed. The true test of a champion is not whether he can triumph, but whether he can overcome obstacles - preferably of his own making - in order to triumph.

Garth Stein