Always Looking Up: The Adventures Of An Incurable Optimist Quotes
"Technically, my body is only fully at peace when my mind is completely at rest--that is, asleep."
"Any chance of slipping back into sleep is lost."
"I can usually tell whether shaving is a good idea on any particular day."
"In lieu of proper brushing, I raise my twitching fingers up to my hairline and, raking it back, hope for the best."
"This reflected version of myself, wet, shaking, rumpled, pinched, and slightly stooped, would be alarming were it not for the self-satisfied expression pasted across my face."
"I've made the most of the head start one gains from being underestimated."
"For everything this disease has taken, something with greater value has been given--sometimes just a marker that points me in a new direction that I might not otherwise have traveled."
"I've learned that what is important is making that one step count; always looking up."
"The only unavailable choice was whether or not to have Parkinson's. Everything else was up to me."
"The last ten years of my life, which is really the stuff of this book, began with such a loss: my retirement from Spin City."
"I was, for all intents and purposes, my own boss."
"While nervous about how people were going to react when I told them the truth, I was far more concerned with their reactions if I continued to withhold it."
"To be brutally honest, for much of that time, I was the only person in the world with Parkinson's."
"I never went to bed without realizing how fortunate I was."
"I was especially impressed by his strength in facing his own ordeal and his recognition of the situation faced by others."
"I didn't have to let the terms of a disease define me--I could redefine the terms."
"I had no idea what to expect from the place. But as we negotiated the long driveway up to the villa, my concerns vanished."
"The exchange that closed the scene, however, was really all about me and Tracy, an acknowledgment of how much I am empowered by her belief in me."
"Optimism has always been a way of life for us."
"I mean, it's not that I was expecting a kegger, but this all seemed a bit refined."
"Regardless of the fact that Lance and his team had won before and would win many more times in the years ahead, the elegance of the evening made clear that a victory in the Tour de France was a moment to be savored."
"If I'm gonna mumble the mumble, I gotta stumble the stumble."
"Incurable disease is a nonpartisan problem that will require a bipartisan solution."
"Spying around a partition wall earns an unobstructed view."
"The answer lies somewhere between faith and hope, between seeking change through a petition of God and seeking it through an exercise of political franchise."
"Christopher Reeve defined hero as 'an ordinary individual who finds the strength to persevere and endure.'"
"Sometimes bad things happen, but it's how you deal with those things that matters."
"Before a catastrophe, we can't imagine coping with the burdens that might confront us in a dire moment. Then when that moment arrives, we suddenly find that we have resources inside us that we knew nothing about."
"Either you decide to stay in the shallow end of the pool, or you go out in the ocean."
"We've been blessed with the resources, the intelligence, spirit, and the energy to tackle these kinds of problems and we're all set to do it...Since when does America wait for someone else to figure it out?"
"What you do here in Missouri has an impact on the entire country, on me, my wife and my four children, and all those Americans who either have, or love someone who has, an incurable disease or condition."
"Ad hominem: Appealing to personal considerations rather than to logic or reason."
"I have grown so used to living with the disease that I am able to direct the majority of my focus, apart from the foundation, advocacy, and general maintenance, on living and not the disease."
"If you've ever played a drunken game of Whac-a-Mole, you've experienced frustration commensurate with attempting to control advanced Parkinson's symptoms."
"Parents are supposed to be able to fix their children's problems. I know you're not a child anymore, but you're my child, and I can't help you."
"It's a process. It's how this country was built. It's what we do."
"Hope is...I don't want to get too corny about it, but isn't that what the person in the harbor with the thing--?"
"We take our responsibility as citizens very seriously and our sense of ethics and, again, our spirituality and our participation in government, we take it very seriously."
"No single one of us knows which pebble causes the wave to crest, but each of us, quite rightly, believes that it might be ours; an act of faith."
"Listening to people espouse beliefs different from mine is informative, not threatening, because the only thing that can alter my worldview is a new and undeniable truth."
"Respect requires greater knowledge, and in my experience, the more you know, the less you fear."
"If listening is an expression of optimism, it would seem that the results of the 2006 midterm election spoke to a rising tide of optimism in this country."
"I've always considered faith to be an aspect or facet of optimism, a cousin of, if not a synonym for, hope."
"The purpose that you wish to find in life, like a cure you seek, is not going to fall from the sky. I think that purpose is something for which one is responsible; it's not just divinely assigned."
"I had no idea what the future would hold for me once I stepped out of the comfort zone of my television career."
"We do so much to protect ourselves from the truth, but what I have learned and drawn strength and comfort from, especially over the last seventeen years or so, is that the truth protects us from ourselves."
"I understand by now that, really, I just dug the showbiz, the flamboyant theatricality, and all that rich, unintended irony."
"Every once in a while, he would slow down just enough to let me catch up, but he was no longer following the careful geometry of my plan. He was finding his own path."
"The Jewish culture, as I was beginning to understand it, places structure and ritual around this transition, instructing these emerging life forms to recognize and accept their responsibility to themselves, their families, and others."
"I don't know if I fully realized it at first, but a lot of the acquaintances I made upon arriving in Los Angeles and insinuating myself into the entertainment industry were Jewish people."
"My experience with Russ and his family, whose culture and religion (though more fervent) were essentially my own, seemed much more exotic to me than the Jewish culture in which I was quickly beginning to feel at home."
"The producer/director Garry Marshall gave me his theory regarding my success in comedy: 'You've got Jewish timing,' he said, 'and a goyishe punim.'"
"I believe there is a higher power in this universe, and I know for a fact that it is not me."
"Chris Reeve wisely parsed the difference between optimism and hope. Unlike optimism, he said, 'Hope is the product of knowledge and the projection of where the knowledge can take us.'"
"I believe that our future will be enhanced by bringing close our people's non-Jewish spouses and embracing those who choose to join us."
"When your first baby is sucking on a pacifier and spits it out onto the floor, you pick that pacifier up, and before returning it to your child's mouth, you immerse it in boiling water to make sure you've destroyed any traces of bacteria."
"If all the risks are removed from a child's environment, the child will be doomed to a life of playing it safe."
"Letting go doesn't just mean eschewing the unpleasant stuff, it also means knowing when something is not yours to hold."
"My focus is on the third from the left--little, ethereal, ecstatically happy."
"I let go of any last remaining delusion that nothing major could transpire in this kid's heart, between her ears, or in her soul without my having put it there."
"You can only be present, be aware, be responsive, be compassionate, and love that child with everything you have."