J Watson Quotes & Sayings

I could see it all. The hand on the shoulder, then the hug. The mouths that find each other through the tears, the moment when guilt and the certainty that things must go no further gives way to lust and the certainty that they cannot stop. — S.J. Watson

We're constantly changing facts, rewriting history to make things easier, to make them fit in with our preferred version of events. We do it automatically. We invent memories. Without thinking. If we tell ourselves something happened often enough we start to believe it, and then we can actually remember it. — S.J. Watson

What are we, if not an accumulation of our memories? — S.J. Watson

We are in a restaurant, smilling, leaning in over a half-eaten meal, our faces flushed with love and thr bite of the sun. — S.J. Watson

Kiss me, Ben," I said. "Properly. — S.J. Watson

Success is on the far side of failure. — Thomas J. Watson

I am an adult, but a damaged one. — S.J. Watson

I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd fought for you. I was weak and stupid. — S.J. Watson

Loyalty saves the wear and tear of making daily decisions as to what is best to do. — Thomas J. Watson

Work. Write. Read. Keep putting words on the page, because that's the only way you'll get better. — S.J. Watson

If you want to increase your success rate, double your failure rate. — Thomas J. Watson

I step back further, until I feel cold tiles against my back. It is then I get the glimmer that I associate with memory. As my mind tries to settle on it, it flutters away, like ashes caught in a breeze, and I realize that in my life there is a then, a before, though before what I cannot say, and there is a now, and there is nothing between the two but a long, silent emptiness that has led me here, to me and him, in this house. — S.J. Watson

Once an organization loses its spirit of pioneering and rests on its early work, its progress stops. — Thomas J. Watson

Pain, or pleasure. I could not tell where one ended and the other began. — S.J. Watson

The way to succeed is to double your error rate. — Thomas J. Watson

And then, when there is nothing else between us but love, we can begin to find a way to truly be together. — S.J. Watson

... I feel like he's taking advantage of me. Advantage of my illness. He thinks he can rewrite history in any way that he likes and I will never know, never be any the wiser. But I do know. I know exactly what he's doing. And so I don't trust him. In the end he is pushing me away, Dr. Nash. Ruining everything. — S.J. Watson

Why did he feel that wanting to make sense of my fractured life meant that I wanted to change it in some way? — S.J. Watson

Do you trust me?
The question is usually asked before an admission that such trust is misplaced. — S.J. Watson

The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas and enthusiasm. — Thomas J. Watson

Instead, thoughts race, as if, in a mind devoid of memory, each idea has too much space to grow and move, to collide with others in a shower of sparks before spinning off into its own distance. I — S.J. Watson

Really big people are, above everything else, courteous, considerate and generous - not just to some people in some circumstances - but to everyone all the time. — Thomas J. Watson

I have no choice but to face whatever my reality has become. — S.J. Watson

Every time we've moved ahead in IBM, it was because someone was willing to take a chance, put his head on the block, and try something new. — Thomas J. Watson

Is it possible to both want and not want something at the same time? For desire to ride with fear? — S.J. Watson

A manager is an assistant to his men. — Thomas J. Watson

I am floating, I thought, completely without anchor, at the mercy of the wind. — S.J. Watson

To be successful, you have to have your heart in your business and your business in your heart. — Thomas J. Watson

I am sliding, down,down. Toward blackness, I must not sleep. I must not sleep.I.Must.Not.Sleep. — S.J. Watson

I want him to be happy. And I want you to be happy, too. Even if you can only find that happiness without me. — S.J. Watson

I am frightened to discover my past. What I have achieved, and what I have not. — S.J. Watson

She looks so young, so hungry, her eyes full of possibility, of what is in store for her. — S.J. Watson

This is dying everyday. Over and over. — S.J. Watson

If you aren't playing well, the game isn't as much fun. When that happens I tell myself just to go out and play as I did when I was a kid. — Thomas J. Watson

Charles Wesley's hymns are forceful because they contain so many words which are physical: for him the life of a Christian was to be experienced in the body as well as in the soul. — J.R. Watson

We both pretended to attach no significance to what had happened, and so revealed just how much significance there was. — S.J. Watson

But, I realized, these truths are all I have. They are my past. They are what makes me human. Without them, I am nothing. Nothing but an animal. I — S.J. Watson

These snatched moments. Kneeling in front of the closet or leaning on the bed. Writing. I am feverish. It floods out of me, almost without thought. Pages and pages. I am here again now, while Ben thinks I am resting. I cannot stop. I want to write down everything. I wonder if this is what it was like when I wrote my novel, this pouring onto the page. Or had that been slower, more considered? I wish I could remember. — S.J. Watson

Get busy achieving all the things in life you want to achieve", she said, "because one day you'll be fine and the next ... " I knew what she meant: Boom! My ambitions would disappear and all I would want to do would be to have children. "It's what happened to me," she said. "It'll happen to you. It happens to everyone. — S.J. Watson

To create myself from nothing. — S.J. Watson

Would you like me to give you a formula for success? It's quite simple, really. Double your rate of failure. — Thomas J. Watson Jr.

As for the public, the PR man, like the advertising expert and others who deal with people in the lump, including a number of would-be-statesmen and redeemers-at-large, conceive of that body as composed of non-ideographic units which are to be regarded not as ourselves but as, ultimately, gadgets of electrochemical circuitry operated by a push-button system of remote control. In fact, in dealing with the public in a purely technological society, the very notion of self is bypassed by various appeals to an undifferentiated unconscious, such appeals often having little or no relation to the vendible object or idea; in this connection history gives us to contemplate the fact that the psychologist J.B. Watson, the founder of American behaviorism, wound up in the advertising business. So history may become parable. — Robert Penn Warren

Chrissy," she said. Her voice was quiet, measured. I thought I detected something in it, some new emotion. Fear. "Describe Ben to me. — S.J. Watson

Thoughts race, as if, in a mind devoid of memory, each idea has too much space to grow and move, to collide with others in a shower of sparks before spinning off into its own distance. — S.J. Watson

Since we built such sophisticated business machines, people tended to think of IBM as a model of order and logic - a totally streamlined organization in which we developed plans rationally and carried them out with utter precision. I never thought for a minute that was really the case. — Thomas J. Watson

(Thomas J. Watson Sr. of IBM followed the same rule: "I'm no genius," he said. "I'm smart in spots - but I stay around those spots.") — Warren Buffett

I asked for this, I thought, at the same time as I never asked for this. Is it possible to both
want and not want something at the same time? — S.J. Watson

How tempting it must be for him to keep quiet, and how difficult life must be for him, knowing that I carry these jagged shards of memory with me always, everywhere, like tiny bombs, and at any moment one might pierce the surface and force me to go through the pain as if for the first time, taking him with me. — S.J. Watson

There was a letter, tucked among the pictures. It was addressed to Santa Claus and written in blue crayon. The jerky letters danced across the page. He wanted a bike, he said, or a puppy, and promised to be good. It was signed, and he had added his age. Four.
I do not know why, but as I read it, my world seemed to collapse. Grief exploded in my chest like a grenade. I had been feeling calm - not happy, not even resigned, but calm - and that serenity vanished, as if vaporized. Beneath it, I was raw. — S.J. Watson

Whatever enjoyment I might have had at the time would disappear overnight like snow melting on a warm roof. — S.J. Watson

It's perfectly possible to hold two opposing points of view in the mind at once, oscillating between them. — S.J. Watson

certain group of people in the United States tried an experiment. They tried the experiment of making a fortune without working, of making a fortune through the stock exchange. They extended the experiment until it exploded and all went down to earth. "Aspects of World Trade" Thomas J. Watson Sr. July 31, 1930 — Peter Greulich

Recently, I was asked if I was going to fire an employee who made a mistake that cost the company $600,000. No, I replied, I just spent $600,000 training him. Why would I want somebody to hire his experience? — Thomas J. Watson

I think of my sponsor. Rachel. "Addiction is a patient disease," she said to me once. "It'll wait for your whole life, if it has to. Never forget that. — S.J. Watson

I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to my grief. It felt better, somehow, to be helpless. I didn't feel ashamed. — S.J. Watson

I closed my eyes and he kissed my eyelids, barely brushing them with his lips. I felt safe, at home. I felt as if here, against his body, was the only place in which I belonged. The only place I had ever wanted to be. We lay in silence for a while, holding each other, our skin merging, our breathing synchronized. I felt as if silence might allow the moment to last for ever, which would still not be enough. — S.J. Watson

It's so difficult, isn't it? To see what's going on when you're in the absolute middle of something? It's only with hindsight we can see things for what they are. — S.J. Watson

How will I feel when I look in a mirror and see the reflection of my grandmother? — S.J. Watson

The little things. Perhaps it is these trivialities I have been writing down in my book, these small hooks on which my whole life is hung. — S.J. Watson

It's not life, it's just an existence, jumping from one moment to the next with no idea of the past, and no plan for the future. — S.J. Watson

these truths are all I have. They are my past. They are what makes me human. Without them, I am nothing. Nothing but an animal. — S.J. Watson

With him everything is a test, affection is measured, that given weighed against that which has been received, and the balance, more often than not, disappointing him. — S.J. Watson

There is so much,I thought,just under the surface. So many memories, darting like silvery minnows in a shallow stream. — S.J. Watson

His grief is not new. It has had the time to bed down within him, to become part of his foundations, rather than something that rocks them. — S.J. Watson

This wobbly world
host to insects and lint
and a thousand pithy ways
to feel unserious each minute
It brings about
a great softening of the mind, like
the clouded edges of sea glass (this
filter you could download and apply)
A poultice or an opiate,
rigidly individual. Alone
and erasing sentences to splinters.
(Poem No. 5) — Erin J. Watson

He forgave you though,' said Claire. 'He never held it against you, ever. All he cared about was that you lived, and that you got better. He would have given everything for that. Everything. Nothing else mattered. — S.J. Watson

She said that you and Ben were separated. Ben left you. A year or so after you moved to Waring House." "Separated?" I said. It felt as if the room was receding, becoming vanishingly small. Disappearing. — S.J. Watson

Follow the path of the unsafe, independent thinker. Expose your ideas to the dangers of controversy. Speak your mind and fear less the label of 'crackpot' than the stigma of conformity. And on issues that seem important to you, stand up and be counted at any cost. — Thomas J. Watson Jr.

We sat opposite each other across a table that swam with spilled coffee, warming our hands on our drinks. — S.J. Watson

I looked over at him, running in the distance. Another faulty, fucked-up brain in a healthy body. — S.J. Watson

Progress? You call this progress?" I was almost shouting now, anger spilled out of me as if I could no longer contain it. "If that's what it is, then I don't know if I want it." The tears were flooding now, uncontrollable. "I don't want it!" I closed my eyes and abandoned myself to my grief. It felt better, somehow, to be helpless. — S.J. Watson

Two wrongs don't make anything right, but maybe they make things more equal. — S.J. Watson

The toughest thing about the power of trust is that it's very difficult to build and very easy to destroy. The essence of trust building is to emphasize the similarities between you and the customer. — Thomas J. Watson

It is a common mistake to think of failure as the enemy of success. Failure is a teacher-a harsh one, but the best. Pull your failures to pieces looking for the reason. Put your failure to work for you. — Thomas J. Watson

I could think of nothing, nothing to say, nothing to feel. My mind was empty. — S.J. Watson

Don't make friends who are comfortable to be with. Make friends who will force you to lever yourself up. — Thomas J. Watson

I saw his eyes go up and he looked past me, toward the door, as if he were watching it, waiting. But there was no one there, it did not open, no one left or came in. I wondered if he was actually dreaming of escape. — S.J. Watson

When asked how to achieve success more rapidly, came the quick reply, 'Double your failure rate'. — Thomas J. Watson

Everything seems different now. The room I am in looks no more familiar to me than it did this morning when I woke up and stumbled into it, trying to find the kitchen, desperate for a drink of water, desperate to piece together what happened last night. And yet it no longer seems shot through with pain, and sadness. It no longer seems emblematic of a life I cannot consider living. The ticking of the clock at my shoulder is no longer just marking time. It speaks to me. Relax, it says. Relax, and take what comes. — S.J. Watson

The hands on the shoulder, then the hug.The mouths that find each other through the tears. — S.J. Watson

Failure is a teacher; a harsh one, but the best. — Thomas J. Watson

There were never going to be any happy endings for me. I know that now. But that is all right. — S.J. Watson

I couldn't imagine how i would get from here to there. i couldn't imagine living through a whole string of identical days. — S.J. Watson

We're wearing masks, all of us, all of the time. We're presenting a face, a version of ourselves, to the world, to each other. We show a different face depending on who we're with and what they expect of us. Even when we're alone it's just another mask, the version of ourselves we'd prefer to be. — S.J. Watson

I will never abandon you. I love you too much. — S.J. Watson

He put his hand on mine. I fell into him, knowing what he would do, what he must do, and he did. He opened his arms and held me, and I let him embrace me. "It's okay," he said. "It's okay. — S.J. Watson

I wonder what I would find if I could go back and decipher the layers, if it were possible to delve into my past that way, but realize that, even if it were possible, it would be futile. — S.J. Watson

Whenever an individual or a business decides that success has been attained, progress stops. — Thomas J. Watson

Nothing so conclusively proves a man's ability to lead others as what he does from day to day to lead himself. — Thomas J. Watson

You don't hear things that are bad about your company unless you ask. It is easy to hear good tidings, but you have to scratch to get the bad news. — Thomas J. Watson

There are memories I am better off without. Things better lost forever. — S.J. Watson

Soon I will sleep, and my brain will begin to delete everything. Tomorrow I will go through it all again. — S.J. Watson

I want to sleep. To find a safe place somewhere, and close my eyes, and rest, like an animal.
That is what I am. An animal. Living from moment to moment, day to day, trying to make sense of the world in which I find myself. — S.J. Watson

I guess sometimes it's not so much about how long you've known someone, but about what you've been through together. — S.J. Watson

Design must reflect the practical and aesthetic in business but above all ... good design must primarily serve people. — Thomas J. Watson

All the problems of the world could be settled easily if men were only willing to think. The trouble is that men very often resort to all sorts of devices in order not to think, because thinking is such hard work. — Thomas J. Watson

If you stand up and be counted, from time to time you may get yourself knocked down. But remember this: A man flattened by an opponent can get up again. A man flattened by conformity stays down for good. — Thomas J. Watson Jr.