Lionel Fisher Quotes & Sayings

People who need people are threatened by people who don't. The idea of seeking contentment alone is heretical, for society steadfastly decrees that our completeness lies in others. — Lionel Fisher

Co-dependent tennis is not a good game. When you serve the ball, someone should hit it back to you. If no one tries, the match should be over as far as you're concerned. Put your racket away, go home, find another game tomorrow. Stop returning your own serves, lobs, and volleys. Stop playing off your own energy, needs, and desires. Quit kidding yourself. — Lionel Fisher

Regrets are particularly poignant for the old, those of us who have used up most of the chances we'll ever get and are left to make peace with our failed choices. Most things distance themselves with space and time to eventually slide off the edge of our consciousness, but not regrets. You can shove them aside, disavow them for a lifetime, but they always return. And the longer you deny them, the more they punish you when they can no longer be held at bay. — Lionel Fisher

an aching hollowness in the bosom, a dark cold speck at the heart, an obscure and boding sense of something that must be kept out of sight of the conscience; — Lionel Fisher

If I could be God for a day, I would instantly replace July and August with two Septembers so the twelve months of the new calendar year would consist of January, February, March, April, May, June, September, September, September, October, November, December. On second thought, I'd also replace December with another September, thus deleting the Mas season and ending the year with a fourth September. The Mas season, once known as Christmas until we took Christ out of it, leaving only mas, the Spanish word for more, is my least favorable month of the year because of the greed-mandated financial, emotional and spiritual stresses that the economy-dependent celebration of Mas imposes. — Lionel Fisher

Happiness is an 'I' thing," Culligan says. "It's within yourself. Nothing external is going to make you happy. — Lionel Fisher

you can forget about the 'Well, where shall we go for dinner tonight?' routine and all it entails. If you really feel like a McDonald's fix - and you're in Paris - you just go. — Lionel Fisher

crows going in flocks and wolves in packs, but the lion and the eagle are solitaires. — Lionel Fisher

Americans are funny," Terence O'Donnell pointed out in a conversation we had about our national need to own as much as possible, including our joy.
"We look for a state of happiness," said O'Donnell. "But the French know that's ridiculous. They accept that there are only les petits bonheurs, the little happinesses, only the moments: a sudden view, awakening to a superb morning, the sun's warmth, a cooling breeze. — Lionel Fisher

On that golden summer day, the young woman had just finished her morning run. She had sprinted the last half mile, then stopped abruptly to catch her breath. She was bent at the waist, hands on her knees, eyes on the ground, her mind a world away, perhaps in Barcelona or Tuscany or Rome, exulting in the enchanting sights she would soon see, the splendid life she would have.

It was then that the train hit her.

Unaware, unthinking, oblivious to everything but the beguiling visions in her head, she had ended her run on the railroad tracks that wound through the center of her small Oregon town, one moment in the fullest expectancy of her glorious youth, adrenaline and endorphins coursing through her body, sugarplum visions dancing in her head, the next moment gone, the transition instantaneous, irrevocable, complete.

If I'd had to die young, hers is the death I would have chosen. — Lionel Fisher

The Art of Self, I've learned, is indispensable to material success but corrosive to the human spirit. What's more, much of the misery in the world, I've decided, is caused by people who take themselves too seriously. Certainly, most of the unhappiness I've brought on myself has come from trying to impress others.

The people I find most appealing nowadays are those so secure in who they are, so lacking in ego, pretense, and guile, that they can allow others simply to be themselves. It is, I think, the rarest of privileges, the freedom to be completely oneself in the company of others. — Lionel Fisher

Putting thoughts into words is vastly different from putting truth into words. For words are not truth. As ardently as writers sort and select and polish their words, at the end of the day they are still words. They are not, in themselves, truth. However carefully we choose our words, no matter how eloquently we compile and conjoin and convey them, they remain just words, merely signposts that point to the truth, as Eckhart Tolle put it. Just as preachers, politicians, PR spin masters and the media can't create truth by writing or speaking words they say are true, authors can't validate truth by putting it into print. And the rest of us can't know it by simply hearing or reading the words. We can only find our way to truth by following the signposts and ultimately believing. It all comes down to believing, to faith, for there is no proof this side of the big dirt nap. — Lionel Fisher

I don't believe in funerals.

Funerals aren't for the dead. The dead are gone. They couldn't care less.

Funerals are for the living.

They're for the people trying to feel better about the things they could have said, the things they could have done for the dead while they were still alive.

The dead don't give a damn.

The dead couldn't care less about what's being said to them, about them.

Hell, they're dead.

The dead know the living aren't there for them, but for themselves. To feel better, to feel less guilty, less regretful, to feel loved, better appreciated by all the other living people who, like them, should have paid attention to the dead while it still mattered, while they were still alive.

So screw funerals.

Forget the dead.

Tend to the living.

Before it's too late.

Before they're dead — Lionel Fisher

Curmudgeons speak up because they have to, because it's become critically important for them to tell the truth as they see it. Telling the truth is as natural to them once more as it was when they were children. The fact that no one cares to listen is inconsequential. Curmudgeons speak up, raise their voices, stand for something too right to be silent about anymore, whatever the cost, despite a world that deals with what it doesn't want to hear by crucifying the messenger.

Increasingly these days, they're being called by another name: whistleblower. — Lionel Fisher

My poignant regret is that I so nonchalantly ended my youth, blithely discarding those remaining seasons in the sun. — Lionel Fisher

Men are jerks. If I were a woman I'd be a lesbian. You get to make love to other women and have little to do with asshole men. Lesbians are better lovers, too, because they know where everything is. — Lionel Fisher

I was always a stranger at home, in all the places I ever lived. — Lionel Fisher

Catholic sex is twenty minutes of pleading and whining (Vatican-approved foreplay), thirty seconds of involuntary shuddering and an hour of apologizing to God. — Lionel Fisher

When was the last time someone was so overjoyed to see you, so brimming with love and affection that they literally ran to greet you? A dog will do that for you--ten, twenty, thirty times a day. — Lionel Fisher

I may be in deep slop if the findings of a new study published in the latest issue of Neurology, journal of the American Academy of Neurology, prove to be true. The study conducted by University of Eastern Finland tested 1,449 people averaging 71 years of age and found that the subjects labeled "highly cynical" had a 2.54 times greater risk of developing dementia than those with the lowest cynicism rating.

I'd better tell my youngest son, Andy, about the study, too. I think he became a cynic before he turned 30, the predictable result of the massive self-administered force-feedings of the Story of Man in his pursuit of a Ph.D. in American history.

In Andy's defense, reading too much, too soon, of our track record on earth would make a cynic of anyone. Fortunately, his perusals have turned him into a champion of the underdog as well, another inevitability of historical research, particularly studies of our brutal conquest of the American West. — Lionel Fisher

Why can't we say 'When!' about money the way we say 'When!' about coffee? — Lionel Fisher

I can believe whatever I want to believe.

Who's to prove me wrong this side of the big dirt nap?

Doesn't matter, either, what anyone else believes.

Or whether anyone else believes what I believe.

The important thing is to believe. Really, truly believe.

That's why they call it faith.

And nobody's business but my own. — Lionel Fisher

I woke up this morning with the words clomping around in my head: "Truth does not become wisdom until the exact moment you're ready for it." No one can force it on you, even though everyone thinks they have a right to try. So the rest of us should just put a sock in it. Bug out. Leave everyone to discover their own truths, each in their own way, all in their own time. And go find our own wisdom. Which will happen. But not until that exact, excruciating Aha! moment when, at long last, confusing, convoluted truth becomes simple, crystal-clear wisdom. Because we're finally, gloriously, ready for it. Not a second before. — Lionel Fisher

Homeworkers embody the real American Dream. Not fame or fortune, but being your own boss. Calling your own shots. Taking control of your life, not necessarily to work more--or less--but to work the way you want to work. — Lionel Fisher

At the beach, fifty years later, the old man understands finally that much of what he disavowed in himself before recognizing its irretrievable value, most of the heartache he caused himself and those who chose to love him, came out of that repudiation of his true self.

Such is the power of denial, the old man now realizes: a comforting ally in our struggles for survival, a fierce foe in our quest for ourselves. Denial finds us when we feel most alone, and only alone can we banish this demon that bars the long way home. — Lionel Fisher

Learn to forgive. First others, then yourself - mostly yourself. But you have to forgive. "Get rid of the negativity. So much of your life can go down this dark drain if you let it. Every negative feeling makes you sicker. Every positive feeling makes you better. — Lionel Fisher

Meanwhile, I find comfort in my faith in God, in the wonderful family and friends He's placed in my path. On my lowest days, something will happen that lets me know He's watching out for me, that He sends just the right person to minister to me and to comfort my heart when I need it most." *** — Lionel Fisher

Enough is never enough.

Not for our massive, marauding, relentlessly acquisitive egos whose eternal cry is 'More!'

'More!'

Forever 'More!'

Wisdom, then, is the simple realization, the grateful acknowledgment, 'Hey, I'm good.'

I have enough.

I don't need more. — Lionel Fisher

I'm a writer. I write because I don't talk so good. — Lionel Fisher

Get your life turned right-side-out again. Like a shirt that comes out of the dryer wrong-side-out, you need to turn your life right-side-out before putting it on again. Every day. — Lionel Fisher

That's the best way to judge a relationship. Do you like the person you are when you're with him? — Lionel Fisher

Buddhist monk Sogyal Rinpoche put it this way: "Perhaps it is only those who understand just how fragile life is who know how precious it is. — Lionel Fisher

In the 1991 movie City Slickers, Jack Palance gives Billy Crystal some profoundly simple advice. When Crystal asks him the secret of life, Palance holds up a forefinger, answers with a single word: "One."

Choose one thing. Do it to the best of your ability. Let it go. Pick something else. Repeat endlessly. — Lionel Fisher

Did I think I'd ever find someone I could live with, she asked me, and I said yes, and she said who, and I said me with a vagina and cleavage a little dog could get lost in. — Lionel Fisher

Such an incredible, stupefying realization: I am not, indeed, the center of the universe.

Not! Not! Not!

And the overwhelming gratitude, the flooding relief that comes from finally being able to give myself the permission to lay down that excruciating, exhausting burden of needing to prove to the world, every waking moment, that I am, indeed, undeniably, irrefutably The Center of the Universe. — Lionel Fisher

It's the opening line of a football game returned for a touchdown. Or fumbled.

It's what orange juice is to breakfast, the first minutes of a blind date, a salesman's opening remarks.

It sets the tone, lights the stage, greases the skids for everything to follow.

It's the most important part of everything you'll ever write because if it doesn't work, whatever follows won't matter. It won't get read.

It's your opening paragraph. And enough can't be said about its importance.

Seduction. That's basically what leads are all about--enticing the reader across the threshold of your book, novel or article--because nothing happens until you get 'em inside.

And you literally have only seconds to do it because surveys show that eight out of ten people quit reading whatever it is they've started after the first fifty words. — Lionel Fisher

I used to feel sorry for them, those people who cling to people. I always thought they brought more needs than gifts. I felt that if they didn't want to be by themselves, with themselves, I surely didn't want to be with them either. — Lionel Fisher

Winter again. The summer people have gone. The early morning walks are solitary once more. Fog wraps the ocean and sky like a wet, gray glove. Sprinting through the frosty dune grass, my dog Buddy emerges soaked and grinning. He's become a man-child, his boundless puppy love and mindless exuberance caroming off the walls in a muscular body. He lives by one rule: To be alive is to be gloriously happy. Not a bad way to be, I often remind myself.

Comfortable in the ebb and flow of each other's idiosyncracies and needs, he keeps me company while I work, I join him often in his play. His unflagging high spirits urge me to cram activity and joy into every waking moment as he does. By so doing, I tell myself, I will multiply my allotted time by dog years and dilate the remaining seasons accordingly. A good way to look at life, I figure. — Lionel Fisher

Whatever you are doing, therefore, whatever you are thinking, whatever you are feeling becomes of crucial importance at that moment, — Lionel Fisher