When I was a boy, I would read those postcards and know exactly why my father was doing what he was doing: he was taking a stab at greatness, that is, if greatness is simply another word for doing something different from what you were already doing--or maybe greatness is the thing we want to have so that other people will want to have us, or maybe greatness is merely the grail for our unhappy, striving selves, the thing we think we need but don't and can't get anyway. Brock Clarke
About This Quote

This quote reminds me of some people who had the same dreams and the same ambitions and the same ability and the same potential to do great things. They just don't know how to get it done. They always think there's some secret trick, some special technique they must use, some magic formula for success or enlightenment or whatever, but it's really not so, and there is no such thing as greatness.

Source: An Arsonists Guide To Writers Homes In New England

Some Similar Quotes
  1. The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference. - Elie Wiesel
  2. Is it possible, in the final analysis, for one human being to achieve perfect understanding of another? We can invest enormous time and energy in serious efforts to know another person, but in the end, how close can we come to that person's essence? We... - Haruki Murakami
  3. The day the power of love overrules the love of power, the world will know peace. - Mahatma Gandhi
  4. He suddenly recalled from Plato's Symposium: People were hermaphrodites until God split then in two, and now all the halves wander the world over seeking one another. Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost. - Milan Kundera
  5. It does not matter how long you are spending on the earth, how much money you have gathered or how much attention you have received. It is the amount of positive vibration you have radiated in life that matters, - Amit Ray
More Quotes By Brock Clarke
  1. Because this is another thing your average American man in crisis does: he tries to go home, forgetting, momentarily, that he is the reason he left home in the first place, that the home is not his anymore, and that the crisis is him.
  2. After a dream like that, you're grateful that it was just a dream, that no matter how bad your actual life, it couldn't be worse than your dream life.
  3. When I was a boy, I would read those postcards and know exactly why my father was doing what he was doing: he was taking a stab at greatness, that is, if greatness is simply another word for doing something different from what you were...
  4. Oh no, " I said, because if our life is just one endless song about hope and regret, then "oh no" is apparently that song's chorus, the words we always return to.
  5. I have no idea, ' he said, and that's another thing I'll put in my arsonist's guide: be wary of a man who says, 'I have no idea, ' when asked why his wife doesn't like something he's done, which of course is just another...
Related Topics