Top 100 Garth Stein Quotes
#1. 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
#2. To finish the race first, you must first finish the race.
Garth Stein
#3. 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
#4. 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
#5. In documentary films, you're a storyteller using found objects. You still have to have a story arc and all the elements that make a good story. It really helped me mature as a storyteller.
Garth Stein
#6. 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
#8. King Karma; I know that karma is a force in this universe, and that people will receive karmic justice for their actions. I know that this justice will come when the universe deems it appropriate and it may not be in this lifetime or the next, or the one after that ... but it will come.
Garth Stein
#9. But that day I was anxious. I was nervous and worried, uneasy and distracted. I paced around and never felt settled. I didn't care for the sensation, yet I realized it was possibly a natural progression of my evolving soul, and therefore I tried my best to embrace it.
Garth Stein
#10. 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
#11. The sun rises every day. What is to love? Lock the sun in a box. Force the sun to overcome adversity in order to rise. Then we will cheer! I will often admire beautiful sunrise, but I will never consider the sun a champion for having risen.
Garth Stein
#12. 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
#13. When a dog dies, his soul is released to run until he is ready to be reborn
Garth Stein
#14. But what is worse, smelling the roast and not feasting, or not smelling the roast at all?
Garth Stein
#15. 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.
Garth Stein
#17. 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
#18. 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
#19. I know in this time of great technological advancement, the idea of reading a book seems almost anachronistic, but I think it's worth preserving.
Garth Stein
#20. A race car driver must be very selfish. It is a cold truth: even his family must came second to the race.
Garth Stein
#21. [M]emory is time folding back on itself. To remember is to disengage from the present.
Garth Stein
#22. 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
#23. This is a rule of racing: No race has ever been won in the first corner; many have been lost there.
Garth Stein
#24. 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
#25. You can't know what's going to happen before it happens.
Garth Stein
#26. 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
#27. ...the race isn't over until the checker flies.
Garth Stein
#28. Such a simple concept, yet so true. That which we manifest is before us, we are the creators of our own destiny.
Garth Stein
#29. The smell would have given me an erection if I'd still had testicles.
Garth Stein
#30. head to acknowledge the occasional petting
Garth Stein
#31. Using a dog as a narrator has limitations and it has advantages. The limitations are that a dog cannot speak. A dog has no thumbs. A dog can't communicate his thoughts except with gestures.
Garth Stein
#32. So much of language is unspoken. So much of language is compromised of looks and gestures and sounds that are not words. People are ignorant of the vast complexity of their own communication.
Garth Stein
#33. In Seattle we live among the trees and the waterways, and we feel we are rocked gently in the cradle of life. Our winters are not cold and our summers are not hot and we congratulate ourselves for choosing such a spectacular place to rest our heads.
Garth Stein
#34. Anyone who has a dog knows that they have some very deep thoughts, that they have moods and emotions, they get their feelings hurt. It's not a far reach to give them opinions and values and long-term desires.
Garth Stein
#36. We had a good run, and now it's over; what's wrong with that?
Garth Stein
#37. Success at any endeavor on an elite level demands selfishness.
Garth Stein
#38. No race has ever been won in the first corner," he said. "But plenty of races have been lost there." I
Garth Stein
#39. She was my rain. She was my unpredictable element. She was my fear. But a racer should not be afraid of rain; a racer should embrace the rain.
Garth Stein
#40. It's so hard to communicate because there are so many moving parts. There's presentation and there's interpretation
and they're so dependent on each other it makes things very difficult.
Garth Stein
#41. But there's nothing like your first {child}. They grow up so fast.
Garth Stein
#42. Because the earth calls. The soil, the rocks, the clay. It calls to us to remind us, to make sure we remember. The earth will ultimately win. It always does. We will, all of us, end our lives here. Even the birds.
Garth Stein
#43. 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
#44. Yes: the race is long-to finish first, first you must finish. ~p206
Garth Stein
#45. Do not mistake confidence and self-awareness for egotism. I
Garth Stein
#46. I understood that, as a dog, I could never be as interactive with humanity as I truly desired. Yet, I realized at that moment, I could be something else. I could provide something of need to the people around me.
Garth Stein
#47. 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
#48. Gestures are all that I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature.
Garth Stein
#49. The first time I saw you,' he says, 'I knew we belonged together.
Garth Stein
#50. If you feel you don't have enough, you hold on to things," he said. "But if you feel you have enough, you let go of things.
Garth Stein
#51. Children are not chattel. they cannot be given away or traded in the marketplace.
Garth Stein
#52. Man's closest relative is not the chimpanzee, as the TV people believe, but is, in fact, the dog. "Enzo"
I admire the female sex. The life makers. It must be amazing to have a body that can carry an entire creature inside. "Enzo
Garth Stein
#53. You know," he said, "at some point you're going to realize that being a smart-ass isn't as much about being smart as it is about being an ass." "That's good," I said. "Did you read that in a fortune cookie?
Garth Stein
#54. Those monkey-thumbs were meant for dogs. Give me my thumbs, you fu**ing monkeys!
Garth Stein
#55. Whether he came from monkeys or fish is unimportant. The important idea is that when the body became "human" enough, the first human soul slipped into it. I
Garth Stein
#56. The truth belongs to he who tells it, so what good is it, anyway?
Garth Stein
#57. But I totally understood that what filled us with energy could be irritating to someone else,
Garth Stein
#58. The human language, as precise as it is with its thousands of words, can still be so wonderfully vague.
Garth Stein
#59. I admire the female sex. The life makers. It must be amazing to have a body that can carry an entire creature inside. (I mean, other than a tapeworm, which I've had. That doesn't count as another life, really. That's a parasite and should never have been there in the first place.)
Garth Stein
#61. So what if man's body evolved from the monkeys? Whether he came from monkeys or fish is unimportant. The important idea is that when the body became "human" enough, the first human soul slipped into it.
Garth Stein
#62. Sometimes I believe ... Sometimes I really do believe.
Garth Stein
#63. Your car goes where your eyes go. Simply another way of saying that which you manifest is before you.
Garth Stein
#64. 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
#65. 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
#66. Let me tell you this: The Weather Channel is not about weather; it is about the world!
Garth Stein
#67. 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
#70. I didn't want to admit that I still slept with a stuffed animal. But I did. I loved that dog.
Garth Stein
#71. However things might change around us, we would always be together.
Garth Stein
#72. I realized, then, that being an adult was just about bullshitting everyone around you. Just do things until someone stops you from doing those things, and then say, "Oh, that isn't allowed?
Garth Stein
#73. This is something I'd heard him say before: getting angry at another driver for a driving incident is pointless. You need to watch the drivers around you, understand their skill, confidence, and aggression levels, and drive with them accordingly.
Garth Stein
#74. Your car goes where your eyes go.
Lonliness is unable to survive without a willing host.
Garth Stein
#75. 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
#76. the result is what people live with, not the cause.
Garth Stein
#77. He never understood when she said that if she went to a doctor, the doctor would only invent a disease that would explain why he couldn't help her.
Garth Stein
#78. 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
#79. One more lap, Denny! One more lap! Faster!
Garth Stein
#80. He is so brilliant. He shines. He's beautiful with his hands that grab things and his tongue that says things and the way he stands and chews his food for so long, mashing it into a paste before he swallows.
Garth Stein
#81. You have to have a sense of humor about it all. You can't take yourself too seriously.
Garth Stein
#82. What I want now is what I've always wanted.
Garth Stein
#83. He says racing is doing. It is being a part of a moment and being aware of nothing else but that moment. Reflection must come at a later time.
Garth Stein
#84. 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
#85. How quickly a year passes, like a mouthful of food snatched from the maw of eternity.
Garth Stein
#86. 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
#87. We all play by the same rules. But some people spend more time reading those rules and figuring out how to make them work in their behalf.
Garth Stein
#88. People speak of a will to live. They rarely speak of a will to die. Because people are afraid of death. Death is dark and unknown and frightening. But not for me. It is not the end.
Garth Stein
#89. (C)hoice without alternative is only a sleight of hand; it is a magician's force-play, during which you believe you have free well, but your fate has already been decided: the magician knows which card you will pick!
Garth Stein
#90. I was upset, sad, angry - something! I needed to do something! I needed to feel myself, understand myself and this horrible world we are all trapped in, where bugs and tumors and viruses worm their way into our brains and lay their putrid eggs that hatch and eat us alive from the inside out.
Garth Stein
#91. 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
#92. I gotta be honest with you ... I hate numbers. I hate chapter numbers. I hate them.
Garth Stein
#93. The race is long. It is better to drive within oneself and finish the race behind the other than it is to drive too hard and crash.
Garth Stein
#94. 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
#95. You know what your potential was when you were young: you could have done anything! But instead of doing anything, you did nothing.
Garth Stein
#96. 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.
Garth Stein
#97. A man who drives a two-thousand-pound car at one hundred seventy miles per hour does not get flustered by the honking of the geese.
Garth Stein
#99. 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
#100. You're scaring the dog, Trish pointed out. She rarely called me by name. They do that in
prisoner of war camps, I've heard. Depersonalization.
Garth Stein
Famous Authors
Popular Topics
Scroll to Top
