39 Michael D. Perry Quotes

Michael D. Perry quotes

1. Programming under Windows is like starting a gourmet restaurant using ingredients from McDonalds.

2. We now have a new generation of people coming up that have put their principles and their idealism on lay-away and are a few payments behind.

3. You can't steal second base and keep your foot on first.

4. Life is like a tree. Every branch ends the same, with its limbs outstretched, and its leaves opened up, trying to touch the light it will never reach.

5. It's only the misguided who constantly feel a need convince others that they know where they're going.

6. We all have journeys we must take. The most important ones involve no physical distance whatsoever.

7. True love is a byproduct of an unselfish desire to understand.

8. Self confidence is a communicable disease. It's often mis-diagnosed as arrogance. Unfortunately, there's not much of a fear of it reaching epidemic proportions these days.

9. I'm just fumbling along, trying to find out where the edge of this reality is, at the least so I don't fall off.

10. True patriots don't wave flags.

11. No matter how much you talk to your plant, if you don't water it, it's going to die.

12. Idealism is like innocence. The more you live, the more you lose. However, you can do a lot more with idealism than you can innocence. Innocence is a state of mind; idealism is a state of being.

13. Does a flower look any less wonderous or beautiful if there is no God?

1. “But I hope we don't burden Amy with the idea that living outside the city limits is an inherently pious act. That rural equals righteous. p 3”

2. “In specific moments of ground-level clarity, I recognize the dumbing down of the nation for what it is: an act of charity committed specifically for knotheads like me.”

3. “Inevitably, our children come to see us as we are. Not as we wish we were, or even as we should be.”

4. “... Tom got to rattling off the pranks he and his school boy buddies pulled ... and what I saw wasn't an old man gone wistful but rather an old man still resonating to the glee of a young heart.”

5. “Alice once told me artistry does not reside in motivation but rather stems from showing up, with the intent to be honest. When I meet a dreamer with calluses I try to shut up and listen.”

6. “Sleeping in the same bed with someone to whom you can admit your failings is a lasting comfort indeed. This is not about "mea culpa" as surrender, it is about "mea culpa" as mortar in binding together the uneven bricks of a human foundation.”

7. “The amateur study of philosophy is like taking a few laps with a NASCAR driver. You’re not qualified to do it on your own, you have no business behind the wheel, but for a few laps or paragraphs, you’re right in there with ‘em, and when it’s all over, you’ve learned something. Or, as my local fire chief once said, you’ve simply exasperated the situation.”

8. “If you had gone around the table last night ticking off the Ten Commandments and asking for a show of hands to indicate transgression, you would have thought we were doing the wave. A gloss of the New Testament rules and you would have heard the rotator cuffs snapping. But if you had asked a simpler question -- "Who among you is proud of this?" -- I think you would have seen no hands, and this is what I love about that crew. Chipped and profane, they have taught me that there is a certain vocabulary you learn only through attrition and heartache.”

9. “As usual, I overdreamed and underbudgeted. . . ”

10. “Mom is a compulsive reader. She reads for pleasure, she reads to edify herself, but more often than not, she reads because she can't help it. I understand. The minute I find myself sitting still, I start rummaging around for printed material. p 97”

11. “I understand that what you're doing when you call 911--it sounds so perfunctory--is announcing to strangers that you are losing the battle. I no longer have the strength, I no longer have the answers, the trouble is winning, and won't you please come help"?”

12. “The pesto and angel hair are warm in the bowl on my lap, the fragrances of olive oil and basil blending the exotic and familiar, equal parts sunny Tuscan hillside and hometown dirt. A meal like this makes you want to live forever, if only for the scent of warm pesto in January.”

13. “It’s hard to talk about guns without sounding defensive or blustery. I’m pro-gun the same way I’m pro-potato fork. I use them both to gather food for the year, with the caveat that if you break into my house, I won’t be waiting for yo at the top of the stairs with a potato fork.”

14. “Her eyes are wide and steady beneath the brim of her floppy cap. How far out of infancy do we lose this gaze, with its utter absence of expectation or prejudice? What is it like to simply see what is before you, without the skew of context? p 342”

15. “Memory is a means of possession, but eventually, the greatest grace is found in letting go. _Population: 485_, p 178.”

16. “I am content in bachelor life, but at moments like this, I admit to old-fashioned sexist longing. Sometimes I cook up comfort food, but cooking your own comfort food is akin to scratching your own back. Same sensation, less watts.”

17. “We plunge into love with a naivete that ignores all prior humiliations. Thank goodness, I guess. Because we never learn, we reach for love again and again.”

18. “Grievance is a sullen little boat, blown in the creepy breeze of ridiculous sighs.”

19. “It (a singer's voice) sounds as if it was aged in a whiskey cask, cured in an Ozarks smokehouse, dropped down a stone well, pulled out damp, and kept moist in the palm of a wicked woman's hand.”

20. “I am a stranger in a strange town, and the man standing beside me has just removed his pants. There are mitigating factors—he is well-kempt, we are in a laundromat, and as a registered nurse, I have seen this sort of thing before—but they fail to completely dissipate the tension inherent in sharing close quarters with a pantless stranger.”

21. “We were the church. As the New Testament instructed. When it was time for Sunday morning meeting, we convened in private homes. To raise a structure and call it a church was the worldly way. A church made of hands was soon cluttered with altars and crucifixes, and was thereupon idolatrous. These false churches, they were not walking in Truth. They were whistling off to Hades. This was a shame, because I knew some real nice Lutherans.”

22. “Part of the blame lies with intellectuals who are unable or unwilling to convey their ideas in terms that will play down to the cafe. But anyone who sits in that cafe and dismisses complexity by reveling in their own simplicity is no less pretentious.”

23. “Seed catalogs are responsible for more unfulfilled fantasies than Enron and Playboy combined.”

24. “Imagine the wizened quality of a life blanched of contradiction and double standard. p 44”

25. “It is the blessing of dumb work done close to the earth-one gritty minute at a time, we move forward.”

26. “I got religion in the third grade, and jeepers, did I need it. The devil was in me, and Hardy Biesterveld wasn't helping.”