Michael Patrick

“Night after night I would speak to Violet in the womb (no matter how strange that may seem to some people) because I was looking forward to the day when I would hold her in my arms, no longer just talking to my wife’s pajamas like a fucking lunatic. When the day finally came, I was nervously packing up the car to go to the hospital when I noticed a huge rainbow overhead, something that happens maybe once every thousand years in Los Angeles. I was immediately calmed. Yes, it sounds nauseatingly romantic, but yes, it’s true, and I took it as a sign. After a long and difficult labor, Violet was born to the sound of the Beatles in the background, and she arrived screaming with a predetermined vocal capacity that made the Foo Fighters sound like the Carpenters. Once she was cleaned up and put under the little Arby’s heat-lamp bed, I put my face close to hers, stared into her gigantic blue eyes, and said, “Hey, Violet, it’s Dad.” She immediately stopped screaming and her eyes locked with mine. She recognized my voice. We stared at each other in silence, our first introduction, and I smiled and talked to her as if I had known her my whole life. I am happy to say that, still to this day, when we lock eyes it’s the same feeling. This was a love I had never experienced before. There is an inevitable insecurity that comes along with being a famous musician that makes you question love. Do they love me? Or do they love “it”? You are showered with superficial love and adoration on a regular basis, giving you something similar to a sugar high, but your heart crashes once the rush dies off. Is it possible for someone to see a musician without the instrument being a part of their identity? Or is that a part of the identity that the other loves? Regardless, it’s a dangerous and slippery slope to question love, but one thing is for certain: there is nothing purer than the unconditional love between a parent and their child.”
― Dave Grohl, The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music

“I just don't want to mess things up," she said. "What if we mess things up for him?"
"We will, though. No one's perfect. Everyone's carrying something that their parents would have done differently if they'd known. Or if they'd been better people. Or if things had just been different. That's all right. It's normal. Part of why I am what I am is all the bad choices my mom and dad made, and if they'd done differently, they'd still have made some mistakes somewhere along the line, and those would be part of me instead. They weren't perfect, and we aren't perfect."
"He is though."
"He is, isn't he?”
― James S. A. Corey

“Nothing? You call your theory nothing?”
“Weigh it in the balance with the freedom of one single human spirit,” he said, turning to her, “and which will weigh heavier? Can you tell? I cannot.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed: An Ambiguous Utopia

“Seeing misery everywhere and detesting it, and sincere in wanting to do something about it. Sincere– that was the hell of it. From a distance, one's adversaries seemed fiends, but with a closer view, one saw the sincerity, and it was as great as one's own.”
― Walter M. Miller Jr., A Canticle for Leibowitz