mckenna

“I know what "nothing" means, and keep on playing.”
― Joan Didion, Play It As It Lays

“Thankfully, persistence is a great substitute for talent.”
― Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life

“Living up the Moyea with plenty of small chores to distract him, he forgot he was a sad man. When the hymns began, he remembered.”
― Denis Johnson, Train Dreams

“Then I said something. I said, Suppose, just suppose, nothing had ever happened. Suppose this was for the first time. Just suppose. It doesn’t hurt to suppose. Say none of the other had ever happened. You know what I mean? Then what? I said.
Wes fixed his eyes on me. He said, Then I suppose we’d have to be somebody else if that was the case. Somebody we’re not. I don’t have that kind of supposing left in me. We were born who we are. Don’t you see what I’m saying?
I said I hadn’t thrown away a good thing and come six hundred miles to hear him talk like this.
He said, I’m sorry, but I can’t talk like somebody I’m not.
I’m not somebody else. If I was somebody else, I sure as hell wouldn’t be here. If I was somebody else, I wouldn’t be me.
But I’m who I am. Don’t you see?”
― Raymond Carver, Cathedral