Boris Starling > Quotes

“Life is 10 per cent what happens to you and 90 per cent how you respond to it.”
― Boris Starling, Unconquerable: The Invictus Spirit

“(yes, the bluffer should know that being an online ‘influencer’ is a real job, and that sound you can hear is a legion of long-deceased school careers officers spinning in their graves; no, being an online influencer almost certainly not what Dale Carnegie had in mind when he wrote How To Win Friends and Influence People),”
― Boris Starling, Bluffer's Guide To Veganism: Instant Wit and Wisdom

“(The bluffer should, of course, love anything that sounds counter-intuitive, for it gives them the opportunity to show that what appears counterintuitive is actually counter-counter-intuitive: or, to cut a long word short, intuitive.)”
― Boris Starling, Bluffer's Guide To Veganism: Instant Wit and Wisdom

“My patients need courage to put themselves under my control: I need the courage to fail them now and then.”
― Boris Starling, The Law of the Heart

“What matters to young people will matter on social media. After all, that’s where they get most of their information these days. They don’t even have to be looking for vegan information: it will be pushed towards them by the relentless algorithms (as opposed to the rather less relentless Al Gore), often while they’re browsing for something completely different.”
― Boris Starling, Bluffer's Guide To Veganism: Instant Wit and Wisdom

“When life flips you the bird, flip it the bird back. Scar tissue is stronger than skin.”
― Boris Starling, Unconquerable: The Invictus Spirit

“No one is ever going to die from broccoli flu or spinach flu, and tofu will never become to-flu.”
― Boris Starling, Bluffer's Guide To Veganism: Instant Wit and Wisdom

“Out of the night which covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud. Under the bludgeoning of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed. Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the horror of the shade, And yet the menace of the years Finds, and shall find me, unafraid. It matters not how strait the gate, How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.”
― Boris Starling, Unconquerable: The Invictus Spirit

“This was a sacred homily for Borzov, and Alice respected that. Borzov lowered his glass and stared at her. “What’s vodka, Mrs. Liddell, if not all things to all men? It can be a folk medicine, a hallucinogen revealing the mysteries of the soul, a lubricant more commonly applied to sophisticated machinery than any conventional liquid—and of course it can simply be vodka too. Every aspect of the human condition finds its reflection in vodka, and its exaggeration too. Russians drink from grief and from joy, because we’re tired and to get tired, out of habit and by chance. It warms us in the cold, cools us in the heat, protects us from the damp, consoles us in grief and cheers us when times are good. Without vodka, there’d be no hospitality, no weddings, no baptisms, no burials, no farewells. Without vodka, friendship would no longer be friendship, happiness would no longer be happiness. It’s the elixir sipped sociably, spreading gregariousness and love; it’s also the anesthetic without which life would be unendurable. Vodka’s the only drug that enables the dispossessed to endure the monstrously cruel tricks life’s played on them. It’s the only solace for desperate men and women for whom there’s no other release. So where better to begin the second revolution than at the spiritual home of Russia’s vodka production, the drinker’s Mecca?”
― Boris Starling, Vodka

“And, since no online trend is complete without a healthy dose of controversy, the bluffer can point out that Google search volumes for ‘veganism’ are outpacing those for ‘vegetarianism’ by almost three to one, and one of the reasons for this is that veganism attracts more naysayers than vegetarianism. It’s seen as more hardcore and less forgiving and/ or practical, which allows opponents to weigh in more heavily than they would do on vegetarianism, which is less proscriptive and therefore less controversial.”
― Boris Starling, Bluffer's Guide To Veganism: Instant Wit and Wisdom