Garth Stein Quotes

I hear hundreds of years of life. I hear wind and rain and fire and beetles. I hear the seasons changing and birds and squirrels. I hear the life of the trees this wood came from.

Garth Stein

You’re scaring the dog,” Trish pointed out. She rarely called me by name. They do that inprisoner of war camps, I’ve heard. Depersonalization.

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.

Garth Stein

... Denny was in third place, behind two other cars. They drove past us, and when they came back around for the checkered flag, Denny was by himself; he won the race. When asked how he had overtaken two cars on the final lap, he simply smiled and said that when he saw the starter wag one finger, meaning it was the last lap, he got a flash, and he said to himself, “I will win this race.” One of the racers ahead of him spun off the track, the other locked up his wheels and gave Denny an easy opening to pass. “It’s never too late,” Denny said to Mark. “Things change.

Garth Stein

Often things happen to race cars in the heat of the race. A square-toothed gear in a transmission may break, suddenly leaving the driver without all of his gears. Or perhaps a clutch fails. Brakes go soft from overheating. Suspensions break. When faced with one of theseproblems, the poor driver crashes. The average driver gives up. The great drivers drive through the problem. They figure out a way to continue racing. Like in the Luxembourg Grand Prix in 1989, when the Irish racer Kevin Finnerty York finished the race victoriously and later revealed that he had driven the final twenty laps of the race with only two gears! To be able to possess a machine in such a way is the ultimate show of determination and awareness. It makes one realize that the physicality of 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

Very gently. Like there are eggshells on your pedals, and you don’t want to break them. That’s how you drive in the rain.

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

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

I also believe that man’s continued domestication (if you care to use that silly euphemism) of dogs is motivated by fear: fear that dogs, left to evolve on their own, would, in fact, develop thumbs and smaller tongues, and therefore would be superior to men, who are slow and cumbersome, standing erect as they do. This is why dogs must live under the constant supervision of people.... From what Denny has told me about the government and its inner workings, it is my belief that this despicable plan was hatched in a back room of none other than the White House, probably by an evil adviser to a president of questionable moral and intellectual fortitude, and probably with the correct assessment—unfortunately, made from a position of paranoia rather than of spiritual insight—that all dogs are progressively inclined regarding social issues.

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

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

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

We are all connected -- I believed it then and believe it still now -- at least in an energetic sense. And who’s to say this energy is not real? We can’t see gravity, either, yet we don’t deny it. We can’t see magnetism, yet we don’t question its forcefulness. So, why, then, when people -- spiritual people -- talk about a force of substance that binds us all, that unites us all -- when these people talk about souls -- why do we dismiss them as charlatans?

Garth Stein

I have made mistakes and I have hurt people, I do not deny that fact. But I have corrected those mistakes vigorously once I understood the error of my ways.

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

That which you manifest is before you

Garth Stein

Gestures are all that I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature. And while I occasionally step over the line and into the world of the melodramatic, it is what I must do in order to communicate clearly and effectively. In order to make my point understood without question.

Garth Stein

It’s so hard to communicate because there are so many moving parts. There’s presentation and there’s interpretationand they’re so dependent on each other it makes things very difficult.

Garth Stein

We are all connected. The living to the nonliving, as the nonliving to the living. All things in all directions in all times. It is only in the physical dimension that we have limitations. (The membrane between us is thinner than you think.)

Garth Stein

I’ll give you a theory: Man’s closest relative is not the chimpanzee, as the TV people believe, but is, in fact, the dog.

Garth Stein

Such a simple concept, yet so true. That which we manifest is before us, we are the creators of our own destiny.

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

Terriers are problem solvers. They'll do what you tell them, but only if it happens to be in line with what they wanted to do anyway.

Garth Stein

...that which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignoranve, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves

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

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

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; it is like a blind fish at the bottom of the ocean without eyes, and therefore without judgement. Is it possible? That which is around me does not affect my mood; my mood affects that which is around me. Is it true? Could Denny have possibly appreciated the subjective nature of loneliness, which is 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

Could Denny have possibly appreciated the subjective nature of loneliness, which something nature of loneliness, which is something exist only in the mind, not in the world, and, like a virus, is unable to survive without a willing host.

Garth Stein

To remember is to disengage from the present.

Garth Stein

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

Garth Stein

In racing, they say that your car goes where your eyes go. The driver who cannot tear his eyes away from the wall as he spins out of control will meet that wall; the driver who looks down the track as he feels his tires break free will regain control of his vehicle.

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. And so I tell my story to you, as the Mariner told his: he, standing outside the wedding party, snatching at a passing wrist, paralyzing his victim with his gaze; I, standing with my family at the edge of this immortal forest. I tell this story because telling this story is what I must do.

Garth Stein

That which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.

Garth Stein

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

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 what 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

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

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

I don't understand why people insist on pitting concepts of evolution and creation against each other. Why can't they see that spiritualism and science are one? That bodies evolve and souls evolve and the universe is a fluid package that marries them both in a wonderful package called a human being. What's wrong with that idea?

Garth Stein

However, I don’t understand why people insist on pitting the concepts of evolution and creation against each other. 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. What’s wrong with that idea?

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

Racing is about discipline and intelligence, not about who has the heavier foot. The one who drives smart will always win in the end.

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

Inside each of us resides the truth, I began, the absolute truth. But sometimes the truth is hidden in a hall of mirrors. Sometimes we believe we are viewing the real thing, when in fact we are viewing a facsimile, a distortion.

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

Somewhere, the zebra is dancing.

Garth Stein

[T]he race is long - to finish first, first you must finish.

Garth Stein

To separate oneself from the burden, the angst, the anguish that we all encounter everyday. To say I am alive, I am wonderful, I am. I am. That is something to aspire to.

Garth Stein

Such a simple concept, yet so true: that which we manifest is before us; we are the creators of our own destiny. Be it through intention or ignorance, our successes and our failures have been brought on by none other than ourselves.

Garth Stein

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.

Garth Stein