pressure Quotes

“There is an unfair responsibility that comes with being an only child - you grow up knowing you aren’t allowed to disappoint, you’re not even allowed to die. There isn’t a replacement toddling around; you’re it. It makes you desperate to be flawless, and it also makes you drunk with the power. In such ways are despots made.”

“I am not looking to escape the pressure. I am embracing it. Pressure is what builds up in the chamber behind a bullet before it explodes out of the gun.”

“Ma, I don’t want to grow old. Why’s everybody pushing me so?”

“So many smart men go to pieces nowadays.” “And when haven’t they?” Dick asked. “Smart men play close to the line because they have to – some of them can’t stand it, so they quit”

“Nobody understands how the incessant pressure from above and the incurable incompetence below make it utterly impossible for me to do an adequate job and keep a clean desk.”

“I am a drifter, and as lonely as that can be, it is also remarkably freeing. I will never define myself in terms of anyone else. I will never feel the pressure of peers or the burden of parental expectation. I can view everyone as pieces of a whole, and focus on the whole, not the pieces.”

“Sometimes Grandma is almost as bad as everybody else. As long as she loves me and I love her, what difference does religion make?”

“People change two ways --- with slow persistent pressure, or with a single and sudden traumatic experience.”

“Beneath the pressure of torments such as these, the feeble remnant of the good of within me succumbed.”

“Love is louder then the pressure to be perfect.”

“Pressure makes us, though. You start off as coal and the pressure makes you a diamond.”