Puddlyduck

“Holston could feel the vibrations in the railing, which was worn down to the gleaming metal. That always amazed him: how centuries of bare palms and shuffling feet could wear down solid steel. One molecule at a time, he supposed. Each life might wear away a single layer, even as the silo wore away that life.”
― Hugh Howey, Wool Omnibus

“Memory is often our only connection to who we used to be. Memories are fossils, the bones left by dead versions of ourselves. More potently, our minds are a hungry audience, craving only the peaks and valleys of experience. The bland erodes, leaving behind the distinctive bits to be remembered again and again. Painful or passionate, surreal or sublime, we cherish those little rocks of peak experience, polishing them with the ever-smoothing touch of recycled proxy living. In so doing—like pagans praying to a sculpted mud figure—we make of our memories the gods which judge our current lives.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Tress of the Emerald Sea

“Why, oh why had he taken up Debbie's offer of a free personal training session, and today of all days? There was no way he was going to get ripped abs by this evening, and the muscles he suspected he'd torn in his lower back were hardly the same thing.”
― Matt Dunn, A Day at the Office

“Sometimes the moments in our life pile up and become an unstoppable force that makes us change. But at other times they become a mountain impossible to surmount.
Everyone misses shots now and then. But if you become known as the person who misses- if you internalize it -well, suddenly every miss becomes another rock in that pile. While every hit gets ignored. Eventually you become Ann: arm shaking, sweat pouring down your face, clutched by the invisible but very real claws of self-fulfilling determination. Then you start missing not because your aim is bad, or your eyesight is poor, but because your arm is shaking and sweat is pouring down your face.
And because missing is what you do.”
― Brandon Sanderson, Tress of the Emerald Sea