John Green
- Paper Towns
You see how fake it all is. It's not even hard enough to be made out of plastic. It's a paper town. I mean look at it, Q: look at all those cul-de-sacs, those streets that turn in on themselves, all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things.
Adrian Beltran
- Dreams
You should never let anything keep you from your dreams. They are what makes your life special. That is unless your dream is to slit the throats of the adorable family of four that live in the pretty yellow house across the street.
Adrian Beltran
After travelling for a while there is always one thing that I think still surprises me every time. No matter where I go and how great or rather normal it may be, after spending enough time in a strange land returning to my own home is often more strange and surreal.
Adrian Beltran
- A Good Tip for Everyone
Your brain is like a muscle that tires as muscles do. If you use it more it will improve, but use it for too long in one day and it will tire. This is normal. Unless you give your brain a break it will only get slower, and every quote that you type with a lower accuracy will train your brain to do the wrong thing. If you do not stop, make sure you have the patience, grasshopper, to let your WPM go down to increase your accuracy so you can do better next week. I'm no doctor, but you can trust me.
Mary Schmich
- Excerpt from "Wear Sunscreen"
Accept certain inalienable truths: Prices will rise. Politicians will philander. You, too, will get old. And when you do, you'll fantasize that when you were young, prices were reasonable, politicians were noble, and children respected their elders.
Adrian Beltran
Some people say that religion and cruelty go hand in hand, and even though this is true one must be reminded why this is true. Humanity and cruelty, violence, and unspeakable evil go hand in hand. It is because humans practice religion that religion and cruelty go hand in hand.
Douglas Adams
- A Challenging Quote from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Vogon poetry is of course the third worst in the Universe. The second worst is that of the Azgoths of Kira. During a recitation by their Poet Master Grunthos the Flatulent of his poem "Ode to a Small Lump of Putty I Found in my Armpit Last Midsummer Morning" four of his audience died of internal hemorrhaging, and the President of the Mid-Galactic Arts Nobbling Council survived by gnawing one of his own legs off.
Adrian Beltran
- Easy Quote
An easy quote to type is one that is made up of small words and that does not have many commas or periods so that one does not have to think about anything other than the letters. One must remember to not rush; even though this quote is easier, you will go faster without having to try. If you try to go too fast, you will ruin it.
Adrian Beltran
I wish that sometimes I just didn't care anymore. That I could go live my life without the feeling that others are judging me. But everytime I think about how nice it would be to not care about what others thought about me, I remember that those few people whom I have met that are this way are the most obnoxious assholes that I have ever known. I also remember that if I didn't know the pain of being hated that I would not know that special joy of being loved.
Adrian Beltran
- Death
We are arguably the most intelligent species on this planet and yet some people go on through all of their lives with this outrageous idea that they will live until they are 90-something. They go about seeing death but never believing that death will ever come to them. Even I who accepted the fact that I might die at any moment never once thought death might take my father when I was still sixteen. I also never thought that to this day I would still miss him.
Adrian Beltran
- Forgetting
How many people can say that they are satisfied with how their lives are right at this very moment? How many of us can say that their lives have been truly worthwhile? How many people could breathe their last breath and be happy to do so? How many people could accept death at this very moment because they knew that they had lived to their very fullest? Most of us cannot say these things and yet we all should be able to.
Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)
- Serenity Prayer (Abridged)
God, give me grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed, and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other. Living one day at a time, enjoying one moment at a time, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace, taking, as Jesus did, this sinful world as it is, not as I would have it, trusting that you will make all things right.
Adrian Beltran
- Selfishness
Selfishness is most often the force behind all of our actions. We steal because we want whatever thing that is, or we want to feel the thrill of doing something we shouldn't. We go to school and work hard so that we can earn money for ourselves. We love because we feel lonely and we want company for ourselves. Very often even when we are helping others it is because of the sense of fulfillment it gives us, and sometimes because if we don't it makes us feel bad.
Adrian Beltran
- How to Type Quickly
If you want to type more quickly, you need to stop trying to type quickly. Instead, strive for the highest accuracy possible. Practice does not necessarily make perfect; only perfect practice makes perfect. This means you must slow yourself down to eventually speed up, but typing slowly on its own is not enough. You must make a constant conscious effort to type accurately. Getting your accuracy to the desirable 98% is going to be a challenge. Above all, remain patient and enjoy yourself.
Ray Bradbury
- Fahrenheit 451
He looked at a blank wall. The girl's face was there, really quite beautiful in memory: astonishing, in fact. She had a very thin face like the dial of a small clock seen faintly in a dark room in the middle of a night when you waken to see the time and see the clock telling you the hour and the minute and the second, with a white silence and a glowing, all certainty and knowing what it has to tell of the night passing swiftly on toward further darknesses, but moving also toward a new sun.
Adrian Beltran
"Why am I here?" I looked at her, and saw a few wrinkles forming on her forehead as she frowned at me. I could tell she was frustrated about something. "I could be doing anything right now and I choose to spend my time learning things that I will never use in twenty years. What is anybody doing here?" I opened my mouth to answer, but then I stopped myself. She looked down, and I bumped shoulders with her in a friendly manner and smiled. The truth was I had no idea why we were here.
Adrian Beltran
There is something about the night that enchants me. It delights me and makes me want to go out and do something. I want to go out and stay up all night and go drive out somewhere I've never been before and have fun, but every time these thoughts cross my mind I remember that I have no friends. I remember that I have nobody to do this with and that it would be no fun without anyone else there, so I sit myself down in front of my computer and I try to forget all of these things.
Adrian Beltran
I will watch these videos often several times in a row and sometimes I have to remind myself that I have never really experienced any of these things, although when I escape this unreality the sinking feeling that follows motivates me. It motivates me to work hard so that one day I can leave this damned school and do something amazing for myself.
Adrian Beltran
- Slacklining
I started slacklining in hopes that I could get good and eventually go highlining, or slacklining at great heights. It had always been fun, but one day it became something more. My legs wouldn't shake anymore and I wasn't struggling for balance. I found that the very act of walking the line made me forget. When I go to the little patch of woods where my line is, I escape this world we all live in and enter this place where the trees around me are all that exist.
Saint Thomas Aquinas
- Summa Theologica
It is certain, and evident to our senses, that in the world some things are in motion. Now whatever is in motion is put in motion by another, for nothing can be in motion unless it is in potentiality to that towards which it is in motion; whereas a thing moves inasmuch as it is in act. For motion is nothing else than the reduction of something from potentiality to actuality. But nothing can be reduced from potentiality to actuality, except by something in a state of actuality.
