Brian D'Ambrosio Quotes & Sayings

Trying to change someone only makes them cling to their existing behavior with brutish, primal force. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Manassa naught,
a padded white envelope
with no return address,
landlocked and antiseptic,
exploited like a gas station.
Beauty
passes through in the briefest of cameos. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Boxing begins in illusion and ends in real blood and tears. That's what makes it so beautiful. — Brian D'Ambrosio

I've always stressed the value of autonomy for intellectual and moral development. Autonomy provides us with a sphere of discretion which we all require. — Brian D'Ambrosio

To be a boxer is to be within yourself, inside your thoughts and feelings. — Brian D'Ambrosio

In these shallow arroyos
and grease-covered hills,
blowing dust zones,
the Christmas spirit of cotton bales,
fried in butter
and sweeping heat,
life,
spaciously allotted.
Catching our breath,
smiling in silence,
with the lowering sun in our faces. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Life is calmness with squabbling,
accumulating traditions and self-consciousness.
elaborate meals, medicine, law,
pretty pictures unspoiled,
rocking the cradle and holding the hammer,
impressive skies of gray and blue,
believing in what we can't settle,
the mystery of iniquity,
the absolutely sincere predictions of fools,
lighter moods like these. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Old and cold. High rates of suicide and prescription drug abuse. Look at the inbred faces at the grocery stores and coffee shops, the exercise-deficient kids, the routinized state workers, the sun-deprived adults and isolated third and fourth generation sad cases who've never experienced a meal outside of Lewis and Clark County. Make no mistake; Helena, Montana is old and cold and the rigid, sick antithesis of living. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Life,
perhaps less a document than an impression,
conveyed through partial glances,
stream-of-consciousness juxtapositions,
unpredictable rhythms,
a collage of sound,
a conscientious diarist,
a career of blackmail and scandal culminated in murder,
a blind man with a will of iron and a nervous system of gossamer. — Brian D'Ambrosio

On the perfect night there is nothing more transcendent or terrifying than boxing. It's the ultimate representation of the guilty pleasure. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Needless to say, I personally don't believe fighting should be banned. I don't understand why a relatively small segment of the hockey world feels obligated to ban extracurricular combat when it's so popular elsewhere in American sports. Additionally, the league shouldn't be trying to ban fighting to save the enforcers from hurting themselves. Fighters realize the risks associated with what they do, and they are bound to accept these risks. — Brian D'Ambrosio

I'm a migrant worker picking frozen peas,
and a clodhopper hiding behind a white sheet.
I'm a shootout at Ruby Ridge,
and a freefall of flames.
I am closed for the winter,
and crawling in my playpen.
I am cold,
and quick chatter and beautiful smiles.
I am a man missing a limb,
and lettuce and tomatoes.
I am a palace,
and fresh milk and goat cheese.
I'm the great emptiness among Cubans,
and a job that requires the auditing of truth and lies.
I'm a confounding calm that will shatter fear and complacency,
and a town full of self-defined renegades and recluses.
I'm a public execution,
and a lanky husband waiting by the checkout. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Short lives,

bouncing harmlessly as a cloth doll on grandma's lap.

Small helpless states,

pretentiousness garbed in the unintelligible,

makers of disposable art,

the zeal to make a scoop unstoppable,

pacified by fresh news,

of scrabbling sexy movements. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Happiness is a habit,
it's more than fleeting,
more than a disintegrating lozenge. — Brian D'Ambrosio

The stony silence of death,
trapped by the original gravity of our sins,
and the perpetuity of a long, leisurely yawn,
a world where blood and bone no longer matter. — Brian D'Ambrosio

American dream,
a spouse,
a brace of children,
cuddly pets,
coffee-table books,
rusted skeleton keys,
plastic cauliflower bags,
business cards of business-card printers,
a mound of used airmail envelopes.
Old house on moving day,
all echoes and loneliness. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Simplicity matters. Especially when it comes to the muscle memory of boxing. That is perhaps rule number one. Simplicity works. Simplicity is repetition. Repetition is function. Boil function down to one action, maybe two. Left or right. Simplicity. Simplicity is really the hardest thing. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Inevitable pickup trucks complete with full gun racks,
chainsaws,
fishing poles,
and big, sneering dogs in the back,
line the streets and parking lots.
Meek murmur of autumn skies,
Ford and Chevy outfits to roll through town,
as people get ready for a long, gray, foggy winter,
big, four-wheel-drive pickups with snow blades attached,
the box loaded down,
with a high stack of cordwood topped by a huge elk carcass,
to go disheartened in the midst of wretched weather,
cold, raw, continually snowing. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Charisma is a word that erodes stale on the page. When compared with the tangible, flesh experience it tries to label, it falls short. The only way to understand it, is to meet it. — Brian D'Ambrosio

She lives in a town of sorry history,
indifferent to ethical perspectives,
apathetic to female attributes,
cargo and trunk liners,
spilled oil in the garage,
telephone poles shaped like liquor bottles,
sustaining burly weather,
cardiac distressing cold,
tobacco and mortality,
lying face-up on the bar's concrete floor,
no one can waste a life
faster than a Montana redneck. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Force, not persuasion, not discussion, is the legitimate instrument for influencing and policing the hockey mind. Fighting in hockey is one of the most magnificent and eloquent displays of refinement in all of sports. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Pay phones,
relics of an almost-vanished landscape,
always a touch of seediness and sadness,
and a sense of transience,
sweaty phones used by men outside maternity wards,
feeding them fistfuls of change. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Mornings are cool like a spy,
cool like a rebel,
cool like a rhetorical street fighter,
cool like an unfilled spot where wit and joy once stood,
cool like the man who can make productive use of his demons,
cool like the deciphered eccentricities of good friends,
cool like the later protest-and-psychedelic era. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Butterflies,
the embodiment of myth,
the articulation of the past,
first for the elite,
then for the rest of us. — Brian D'Ambrosio

I never trust a man who tucks in his shirt by choice or neglects coffee in favor of tea. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Endings are thus formally unappealing to me, more than beginning or ending, in life, I enjoy continuing. Continuing is my only focus or concern. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Boxing encompasses the very worst and very best of human nature and its beautiful brutality is a marvelous contradiction for a writer. It conjures up so many irreconcilably antagonistic feelings. — Brian D'Ambrosio

One thing that unites triumphant entrepreneurs, whether in Brooklyn, San Francisco or Great Falls, Montana, is strength of character.Individuality is the goal that we all strive to excel at in some way; the notion that we are distinct, special, that there is something teachable about our wisdom, something remarkable about our outlook. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Rum is tonic that clarifies the vision,
and sets things in true perspective. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Boxing is beautiful brutality, and the devil is in the duality. Boxing is a tug of war and you recognize the antithetical feelings that are pulling you from the other end. — Brian D'Ambrosio

The lonely, wistful revisionism of memories is as gratingly repetitive as snow and ice in Canada. I avoid them both at all costs - memories and Canada. — Brian D'Ambrosio

For a man to get married and stay married, he must detach from and disavow the three things that bind him to reality: sex, travel, and near-death experiences. — Brian D'Ambrosio

Her moral obligation
to keep our hearts entwined.
Her preeminent love,
smelling like life,
in a good way,
familiar like an ancient woodcut,
a private postcard in the midst of a crowd,
in an old T-shirt to soak up the memories,
committed to recycling life.

repairing the nucleus. — Brian D'Ambrosio

There is such a quiet desperation and chronic sense of dullness to Helena, Montana, which makes it the most socially grotesque and culturally bitter of any of the capital cities. — Brian D'Ambrosio

After you have seasoned your gloves with the blood, sweat and tears of your opponents, all else is anticlimactic. — Brian D'Ambrosio