Enid

“They’re just—happy.” “About what?” She looked at the men, thinking. “Beer, sweetheart. They’re happy about beer.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar

“Just try your best, babe,” she said. “That’s the same thing Mrs. Williams’s contract says,” I complained. “How do I know what my best is?” “Your best is whatever you can do comfortably without having a breakdown.” She didn’t understand. According to my black-or-white view of the world, it wasn’t enough to do my best. I had to be perfect. To take care of my mother, to send her to college, I needed to eliminate all mistakes. Mistakes had led to our predicament—Grandma marrying Grandpa, Grandpa denying my mother’s wish to go to college, my mother marrying my father—and they continued to cost us. I needed to correct those mistakes by avoiding new ones, and by getting perfect grades, then getting into a perfect college, then a perfect law school, then suing my imperfect father. But with school getting harder, I couldn’t see how I was going to be perfect, and if I were imperfect, then my mother and Grandma would be disappointed with me, and I’d be no better than my father, and then my mother would sing and cry and peck at her calculator—this was how my mind raced on the playground as I watched the other kids playing tetherball.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar

“great issue of your life, I promise you. Fear will be the fuel for all your success, and the root cause of all your failures, and the underlying dilemma in every story you tell yourself about yourself. And the only chance you’ll have against fear? Follow it. Steer by it. Don’t think of fear as the villain. Think of fear as your guide, your pathfinder—your Natty Bumppo.”
― J.R. Moehringer, The Tender Bar

“The Four Horsemen of the Apocalype give a preview of how the world will end: in war, famine, sickness and death. But Jesus gave a personal preview of how the world will be restored, by reversing the deeds of the Four Horsemen: he made peace, fed the hungry, healed the sick, and brought the dead to life.”
― Philip Yancey, The Jesus I Never Knew