Cody > Cody's Quotes

“First, Lord: No tattoos. May neither Chinese symbol for truth nor Winnie-the-Pooh holding the FSU logo stain her tender haunches.

May she be Beautiful but not Damaged, for it’s the Damage that draws the creepy soccer coach’s eye, not the Beauty.

When the Crystal Meth is offered, May she remember the parents who cut her grapes in half And stick with Beer.

Guide her, protect her

When crossing the street, stepping onto boats, swimming in the ocean, swimming in pools, walking near pools, standing on the subway platform, crossing 86th Street, stepping off of boats, using mall restrooms, getting on and off escalators, driving on country roads while arguing, leaning on large windows, walking in parking lots, riding Ferris wheels, roller-coasters, log flumes, or anything called “Hell Drop,” “Tower of Torture,” or “The Death Spiral Rock ‘N Zero G Roll featuring Aerosmith,” and standing on any kind of balcony ever, anywhere, at any age.

Lead her away from Acting but not all the way to Finance. Something where she can make her own hours but still feel intellectually fulfilled and get outside sometimes And not have to wear high heels.

What would that be, Lord? Architecture? Midwifery? Golf course design? I’m asking You, because if I knew, I’d be doing it, Youdammit.

May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers.

Grant her a Rough Patch from twelve to seventeen. Let her draw horses and be interested in Barbies for much too long, For childhood is short – a Tiger Flower blooming Magenta for one day – And adulthood is long and dry-humping in cars will wait.

O Lord, break the Internet forever, That she may be spared the misspelled invective of her peers And the online marketing campaign for Rape Hostel V: Girls Just Wanna Get Stabbed.

And when she one day turns on me and calls me a Bitch in front of Hollister, Give me the strength, Lord, to yank her directly into a cab in front of her friends, For I will not have that Shit. I will not have it.

And should she choose to be a Mother one day, be my eyes, Lord, that I may see her, lying on a blanket on the floor at 4:50 A.M., all-at-once exhausted, bored, and in love with the little creature whose poop is leaking up its back.

“My mother did this for me once,” she will realize as she cleans feces off her baby’s neck. “My mother did this for me.” And the delayed gratitude will wash over her as it does each generation and she will make a Mental Note to call me. And she will forget. But I’ll know, because I peeped it with Your God eyes.”
― Tina Fey, Bossypants

“The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.”
― Muriel Rukeyser

“When seen through the lens of technology, few resources are truly scarce; they’re mainly inaccessible.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“Right now a Masai warrior with a cell phone has better mobile phone capabilities than the president of the United States did twenty-five years ago.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“Organizing, and the minutiae of tactics are secondary to creating the best situation for a player to develop. He wants his players to learn in order to think for themselves, and think in order to learn for themselves.”
― Amy Lawrence, Invincible: Inside Arsenal's Unbeaten 2003-2004 Season

“Dixon was personally grateful to be educated by the contrasting methods of George Graham and Arsène Wenger. One instilled the basics of defensive discipline. The other inspired freedom of expression on the field.”
― Amy Lawrence, Invincible: Inside Arsenal's Unbeaten 2003-2004 Season

“George drilled us into very knowledgeable individuals, and a defence that could almost play with its eyes shut. I don’t know whether Arsène could do that. Well, he couldn’t!’ exclaims Dixon. ‘That’s not his style, he is not that knowledgeable about the defensive side of the game. He doesn’t push people around on the training pitch; he creates environments.”
― Amy Lawrence, Invincible: Inside Arsenal's Unbeaten 2003-2004 Season

“Through football, the incongruous became congruous.”
― Amy Lawrence, Invincible: Inside Arsenal's Unbeaten 2003-2004 Season

“Today most poverty-stricken Americans have a television, telephone, electricity, running water, and indoor plumbing. Most Africans do not. If you transferred the goods and services enjoyed by those who live in California’s version of poverty to the average Somalian living on less than a $1.25 a day, that Somalian is suddenly fabulously rich.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“A week’s worth of the New York Times contains more information than the average seventeenth-century citizen encountered in a lifetime.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“the very beginning of time until the year 2003,” says Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt, “humankind created five exabytes of digital information. An exabyte is one billion gigabytes—or a 1 with eighteen zeroes after it. Right now, in the year 2010, the human race is generating five exabytes of information every two days. By the year 2013, the number will be five exabytes produced every ten minutes … It’s no wonder we’re exhausted.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“Once we start believing that the apocalypse is coming, the amygdala goes on high alert, filtering out most anything that says otherwise. Whatever information the amygdala doesn’t catch, our confirmation bias—which is now biased toward confirming our eminent destruction—certainly does. Taken in total, the result is a population convinced that the end is near and there’s not a damn thing to do about it.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“We might be gloomy because gloomy people managed to avoid getting eaten by lions in the Pleistocene.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“Today [light] will cost less than a half a second of your working time if you are on the average wage: half a second of work for an hour of light! Had you been using a kerosene lamp in the 1880s, you would have had to work for 15 minutes to get the same amount of light. A tallow candle in the 1800s: over six hours’ work. And to get that much light from a sesame-oil lamp in Babylon in 1750 BC would have cost you more than fifty hours work.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“In 1950 the global world product was roughly four trillion dollars,” he says. “In 2008, fifty-eight years later, it was sixty-one trillion dollars. Where did this fifteenfold increase come from? It came from increased productivity in our factories equipped with automation.”
― Peter H. Diamandis, Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think

“the upper echelon of adventure sport athletes are grappling with the fundamental properties of the universe: gravity, velocity and sanity. They’re toying with them, cheating death, refusing to accept there might be limits to what they can accomplish.”
― Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

“as Thomas Pynchon wrote in Gravity’s Rainbow, “It is not often that Death is told so clearly to fuck off.”
― Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

“Nothing’s too gnarly.”
― Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

“Our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the flimsiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness.”
― Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

“I’ve gotten really good at pulling the veil down,” says Way, “at camouflaging reality, locking out my conscious mind and riding my focus into the zone.”
― Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

“If ever you say you can’t do something,” shouts the announcer, “remember Danny Way.”
― Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

“Every good athlete can find the flow,” continues Pastrana, “but it’s what you do with it that makes you great. If you consistently use that state to do the impossible, you get confident in your ability to do the impossible. You begin to expect it. That’s why we’re seeing so much progression in action sports today. It’s the natural result of a whole lot of people starting to expect the impossible.”
― Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

“The happiest people on earth worked hard for their fulfillment. They didn’t just have the most peak experiences, they had devoted their lives to having these experiences, often,”
― Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

“We pay to watch, read, or be in the presence of a flow experience. If quantified, you’d find it’s a major chunk of the GDP.”
― Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

“Temple University sports psychologist Michael Sachs, who made an extensive study of these states, summed this up nicely: “Every gold medal or world championship that’s ever been won, most likely, we now know, there’s a flow state behind the victory.”
― Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

“All no means is they don’t know for sure or there’s a secret being kept, like someone’s trying to hide something really good.”
― Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

“Imagination,” says futurist and philosopher Jason Silva, “allows us to conceive of delightful future possibilities, pick the most amazing one, and pull the present forward to meet it.”
― Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

“Flow tends to be the psychic signature of world-class performance and paradigm-shifting breakthroughs,”
― Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

“there’s a difference between when this happens in an artist’s studio or on the tennis court versus inside the barrel of a fifty-foot wave. When you tap into that much force while pushing the absolute limits of human performance, that’s more than just an imaginative breakthrough—that’s bending reality to your will.”
― Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance

“transient hypofrontality removes our sense of self. With parts of the prefrontal cortex deactivated, there’s no risk assessor, future predictor, or inner critic around to monitor the situation. The normal safety measures kept in place by the conscious mind are no longer. This is another reason why flow states significantly enhance performance: when the “self” disappears, it takes many of our limits along for the ride.”
― Steven Kotler, The Rise of Superman: Decoding the Science of Ultimate Human Performance