Mexico scares me. There's no law, there's wild dogs and people driving their ATVs down the street. I like to know I can walk down the street and not be arrested for something dumb and have to pay to get my way out.
We all live in a house on fire, no fire department to call; no way out, just the upstairs window to look out of while the fire burns the house down with us trapped, locked in it.
The next time you find yourself racing quickly down the street, know that you're not only running to your next appointment, you are literally running from contact with your truest feelings, deepest needs and most valuable insights.
I teach students that what people say about failure in politics is mostly wrong. People always told me, 'They'll praise you on your way up and kick you on your way down.' That wasn't my experience. I can't walk down the street in Toronto without someone coming up and saying hello.
I wondered if the fire had been out to get me. I wondered if all fire was related, like Dad said all humans were related, if the fire that had burned me that day while I cooked hot dogs was somehow connected o the fire I had flushed down the toilet and the fire burning at the hotel. I didn't have the answers to those questions, but what I did know was that I lived in a world that at any moment could erupt into fire. It was the sort of knowledge that kept you on your toes.
A paparazzo once jumped out of a car and started running backward with me. I slowed down out of courtesy because she started drifting into the street. I reached out my hand and moved her back so she didn't get hit by a bus.
If a man is running down the street with everything you own, you won't let him get away. That's tackling.
But what if your fire is not burning well or, worse, has gone out? Without inner fire, you have no light, no heat, no desire... there's only one way out - and that's through the dark woods. You must change your life.
As you get older, and this is a young man's game, and people say, 'Well, there's no way I can keep up running the way I'm running; there's no way my arm is going to stay as strong as it is.' It's the challenge of trying to stay in my tip-top shape year in and year out so I can keep playing the way I want to play.
If your fire begins to flame, don't spray water on it, which most people do. Instead, just close your dampers and the fire will go out because fire must have oxygen.
Same way we have enough money to bail out Wall Street, we need to put a down payment on Main Street.
I'm from Kansas, so there were a lot of vacant lots and open fields to tackle each other in so we could avoid tackling each other on the street. But running on the street and trying not to get taken down on the concrete, that will make you fast, that's for sure.
If I didn't have writing, I'd be running down the street hurling grenades in people's faces.
. . . people use tricks to get you to think the way they do or take away something you have that they want. One way they do that is to interrupt your normal way of thinking and take you by the hand and guide you down the path they want you to take. Father says they make you take a teeny-weeny step in their direction, and then they start to nudge you a little further down the path and before you know it, you're running full speed with them in a direction that you probably wouldn't have gone alone.
It's funny, honestly, by rights, with a lot of the stuff that's happened to me I should be running down the street with my hair on fire, but instead I want to shape things, and I want to shake things up. There's nothing wrong with being an agitator.
All on the street, you get treated like a street cat: "All right, you've been eatin' enough, you're fat, get out of the way now and let somebody else come by."