Thalia

“He began teaching me the basics of technique but put equal emphasis on the mental game. He taught me that the vital key was the ability to let go of the outcome. You must be able to repeat the best version of your shot as many times as you can, exactly the same way. Any shot where your try harder, which he referred to as the 'fancy shot' will throw off your technique. Even if you're down to the last arrow to win the gold medal you have to think of it as just another shot, rather than trying for an extra good shot. You can't be invested in the outcome. Just take the shot.”
― Geena Davis, Dying of Politeness: A Memoir

“I had always had a problem with L'espirit de l'escalier -"the spirit of the staircase' the French term for thinking of what to say after you've already left the party. But oh boy, it's fun when you say the right thing in the right moment. It's very rare now for me to have regret on the stairs.”
― Geena Davis, Dying of Politeness: A Memoir

“My skill at being no trouble to anyone also kicked in early. I was sitting on my mom's lap during a church service, and as one-year-olds are wont, I was fussing, and jerking and generally moving around a bunch. Somehow, I managed to clock my head on the pew in front of us; the bonk of my skull hitting wood was so loud everything stopped. The congregation held its collective breath to see how much bloody murder I was prepared to scream. And then, nothing. Mom said she held me tightly, quietly saying, "Shhh.. Shhh.." This because one of her favorite stories about me. As if I'd passed some kind of cosmic test in which I had maintained decorum and invisibility.”
― Geena Davis, Dying of Politeness: A Memoir

“Only one thing was real, more real to me now than the past that we’d lost or the future we didn’t have: if I put one foot in front of the other, the path would move me forward and a strip of dirt, often no more than a foot wide, had become home. It wasn’t just the chill in the air, the lowering of the sun’s horizon, the heaviness of the dew or the lack of urgency in the birds’ calls, but something in me was changing season too. I was no longer striving, fighting to change the unchangeable, not clenching in anxiety at the life we’d been unable to hold on to, or angry at an authoritarian system too bureaucratic to see the truth. A new season had crept into me, a softer season of acceptance. Burned in by the sun, driven in by the storm. I could feel the sky, the earth, the water and revel in being part of the elements without a chasm of pain opening at the thought of the loss of our place within it all. I was a part of the whole. I didn’t need to own a patch of land to make that so. I could stand in the wind and I was the wind, the rain, the sea; it was all me, and I was nothing within it. The core of me wasn’t lost. Translucent, elusive, but there and grown stronger with every headland.”
― Raynor Winn, The Salt Path