“When people think of the word ‘drive,’ they often think you have it or you don’t, and that’s where we’re wrong.”

One of the challenges of commencement speeches is that you have this older, wiser person who is accomplished talking to young, not-yet-so-wise, not-yet-accomplished adults or, in high school or middle school, even younger.

Some of the things we do are great, but they often have these iterations that are not great. We screw up sometimes. We get rejected.

Very few people can keep going their whole life doing something and feel like it’s merely personally fascinating.

Grit, in a word, is stamina. But it’s not just stamina in your effort.

I think it’s very important to send the message that, while parents are needed to remind you to practice and occasionally force you to finish things… they also need to learn to respect you. You as an individual, ultimately, are the captain of where you’re going.

The most important thing parents can do, although it’s not the only thing they should do, is model the behavior they want from their kids.

It’s also stamina in your direction, stamina in your interests. If you are working on different things but all of them very hard, you’re not really going to get anywhere. You’ll never become an expert.

I do think that whatever ambition I may have had natively was amplified by my father’s clear valuing of it. I knew that was what my dad really cared about.

I worked hard as a teacher. But those are completely different career paths. And the lack of direction is why I didn’t get far enough in any of those things.

Nobody gets to be good at something without effort, no matter what your aptitude is.

Really, what matters in the long run is sticking with things and working daily to get better at them.

The words that we use I think are symbolic of the values that we hold.

Everybody knows that effort matters. What was revelatory to me was how much it mattered.

And I’ve discovered a strikingly consistent pattern: grit and age go hand in hand. Sixty-somethings tend to be grittier, on average, than fifty-somethings, who are in turn grittier than forty-somethings, and so on.

If the quality and quantity of continuous effort toward goals matters as much as I think it does, we may actually get more productive, not less, as we get older – even if we can’t pull all-nighters like we used to.

I think the very idea of character, of developing not just grit, but empathy and curiosity, emotional intelligence.

So many interlocking spirals of history, genetics, common cause, and struggle that it should be the most basic of all drives, that you would strive to protect and love one another, yet this bond that should be the big no-brainer was in fact the hardest thing.

If you’re gonna drive me crazy baby, drive me to drink.

Youre not going to drive me home? I asked. A waste of breath, since i knew her answer. Theres fog. Patchy fog. Vee grinned. Oh, boy. He is so on your mind. Not that i blame you. Personally, im hoping i dream about him tonight.

Drive is something that can be encouraged by a wonderful teacher, by a terrific classroom environment, by an awesome soccer team that you are on, and it can be squashed as well.

My love is bigger than a Cadillac, I try to show you, but you drive me back.

Driving me away is easier than saying goodbye.

Sensual excess drives out pity in man.

You’re going to have to drive off the road and park behind thoses bushes,” i instructed vee. Vee leaned forward, peering into the darkness. “is that a ditch between me and the bushes ?” “it’s not very deep. Trust me, we’ll clear it.” “looks deep to me. This is a neon we’re talking about, not a hummer.