Dan Groat

“I wish but to share your gifts as a young boy on his birthday would excitedly rip open his packages to the view of others.”

“If all you do is think about what you need, you’re no better than an animal in the woods, and no smarter either. To be human, you’ve got to want. It makes you smarter and stronger.”

“As you get older, you have to be willing and able to choose your own path for your life. And once you choose it, you walk it with strength. If you meet evil along the way, know that it is supposed to make you afraid, but it’s not supposed to stop you. You walk through the fear and you walk through the evil, and you don’t let either one become your master.”

“Seek until there is no hope and then seek further. Seek without end. Trudge on without tiring and without fear and without disheartenment. Trudge on, for it is within you to fight any enemy. It is who you are. It is your past and your present and your future. You will not quit. You cannot quit. Your breath is your courage, and as you breathe, so must you hope or you are already dead.”

“It’s as close to true freedom as I have come. Not freedom of, but freedom from; freedom from the debris of life that piles up and forces us to dig and dig for our original self, who we were once upon a time, innocent and wonderfully naïve, as authentically pure as a human can be.”

“People don’t die so the universe can gauge your reaction. They die because life is finite.”

“Peace, a commodity purchased with friendship and safety and anything comfortable and all things familiar; peace that was a pleasant melody playing through the moments of their day; a chord striking only the notes of security and agreement and understanding and order.”

“The world has a way of dragging down our mood.”

“Human thought and human caring go on in one brain and one heart at a time. Groups are necessary. Regulations are necessary. Government, I would hope limited government, is necessary. But it all starts with the individual. Everything that is accomplished starts with one person, even if the group steps in and helps; it’s still one brain and one heart at a time.”

“I don’t know how a reporter would ever understand a politician. Your job is supposed to be about finding the truth and enlightening people. Right? A politician’s job is about hiding the truth and fooling people. Right? You want us to be better informed so we get smarter. They think we’re dumb and it’s to their advantage to keep us that way.”

“How do we keep convincing young people to die in fights they didn’t start for reasons we’re too devious to tell the truth about? It’s way too easy for governments to spend other people’s blood. Maybe only the sons and daughters of those who declare the wars should be allowed to fight and die.”

“The gear teeth of his mind, the cogs of the brain’s machinery that propelled his thoughts, were grinding to a halt, too long forced to fight against the friction of agony without the aid of hope, the lubricant for the soul.”

“Our bird of hope was being denied the altitude it sought, just free enough to fly dangerously close to the reality of the treetops.”

“Men who have been in war have a different attitude about being wronged.”

“Reading had always been, through bad, boring, or better times, his best connection to humans.”

“Politics is all about dividing up the power. Washington D.C. likes to talk about spreading the wealth, but never spreading the power.”

“If the forest has a day of fire and the heat of the flames does not consume a special tree, it will still be changed; charred, but still standing.”

“Being tough today might cause you to be weak in the future.”

“Music is the sound of unspoken thoughts.”

“Evil stinks and it doesn’t disappear just because you want it to. You can still smell it with your eyes closed.”