A Quote by Nick Flynn
I had to steel myself against this psychic devastation - to see your father on the street. It's hard enough to pick up somebody you don't know from the streets, and then to actually have other people pick your father up - it was psychically devastating.
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Genealogy of ideas. You don’t get to pick your family, but you can pick your teachers and you can pick your friends and you can pick the music you listen to and you can pick the books you read and you can pick the movies you see.
God picks you up. You don't pick yourself up. You're the one who knocked you down or even if somebody else knocked you down, your willingness to believe that what they said had value, was your conspiring with them, with their effort to knock you down - I've never been able to get myself up and I've noticed that every time I ask God to pick me up - he does.
How intense could you be? Can you be intense enough to pick this 500Lbs off the floor? Are you intense enough to pick this 700Lbs up? Squat down to the floor and stand back up? So what if your eyes are bloodshot! So what if your bones feel like snapping! WHAT ARE YOU GONNA DO!
One of the first things that my English teacher told when I began studying in New York was, "You're here because if you pick it up from the street, not everyone speaks good English." And it happens all the time, anywhere. If you pick up Spanish from the streets, you're not going to be able to speak it correctly.
What you have to understand, is your father was your model for God. If you're male and you're Christian and living in America, your father is your model for God. And if you never know your father, if your father bails out or dies or is never at home, what do you believe about God? What you end up doing is you spend your life searching for a father and God. What you have to consider is the possibility that God doesn't like you. Could be, God hates us. This is not the worst thing that can happen.
'Our parents' generation had it a lot tougher than we did. They had to live through the Depression, World War II, and then they had to, you know, try to pick up the pieces of their lives and bring up their children. And, it was a great example for us. I guess we grew up with a certain amount of the ethics our parents had, which is, you know: work hard, make your own way, be independent.
You have to pick your places to "step up" and you have you pick your spots. If you're just going to run out there, and, just be what/who you want to be, then you won't be that long.
Pick up a yardstick to measure your life against anyone else's, and you've just picked up a stick and beaten up your own soul.
Occasionally pick up speed-for 2 minutes, tops-then settle back into your former pace. Sometimes this is all you need to snap out of a mental and physical funk. Pick a downhill stretch if you can, and really lengthen your stride.
Other people had strived for freedom and promise and ratatatata but the Constitution [of USA] was the first time we codified it aspirationally and wrote it down and put it up on a wall and said, "this is us." If your father was a cobbler, and his father was a cobbler, and his father was a cobbler, you don't have to be a cobbler.
But the thing about remembering is that you don't forget. You take your material where you find it, which is in your life, at the intersection of past and present. The memory-traffic feeds into a rotary up on your head, where it goes in circles for a while, then pretty soon imagination flows in and the traffic merges and shoots off down a thousand different streets. As a writer, all you can do is pick a street and go for the ride, putting things down as they come at you. That's the real obsession. All those stories.
We cannot win in team situations or in relationships by ourselves. It is like trying to pick up a pencil with only one finger...Even if that one finger is extremely strong, it will prove almost impossible to pick up that pencil unless you use your other fingers or some other part of your hand. Teamwork is a bit like using all of your fingers. Each one is unique and contributes something different, but they unite in pursuit of a common goal.
There was a guy with mental illness in the middle of the street just yelling and hollering. I have a number that I can call - it's not 911 - to tell them, "You need to help this man get out of the street." But you have to be that person, you have to pick up the phone, you have to do it; you can't just walk by and act like they're not people. They're somebody's kid, somebody's dad, somebody's brother.
When I was growing up, there was always somebody who wanted to pick a fight with me. I'd say, I'm not a famous boxer, my father is. If you want to fight somebody, go fight my Dad.
On practical level I can't pick up the camera until I think I know what I want. I don't wander around. It's almost impossible for me to pick up a camera... it's really hard.
Acting is the best job in the world. Look at the way they treat you when you turn up for work. They give you breakfast and a cup of tea and ask, 'Are you all right' They tart up your face, you say somebody else's words, then pick up your check and go home. And you get days off. I tell you, it really is the way to live.
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