Passage 1, from the script of "Up in the Air," a very good film we saw the other day. This is a scene where CLOONEY is firing yet another person:

CLOONEY: How much did they pay you to give up on your dreams?

BOB: 27 thousand a year.

CLOONEY: At what point were you going to stop and go back to what made you happy. Do you believe in fate, Bob? ... I see guys who work for the same company their entire lives. Clock in. Clock out. Never a moment of happiness. Not everyone gets this kind of opportunity. The chance for rebirth.

Passage 2, from a 2005 NYT Mag piece on Mike Leach, the recently fired Texas Tech football coach:

Stepping out into Jones SBC Stadium, surrounded by people wearing self-conscious looks of grim determination, Leach was even easier than usual to identify: he was the one guy wandering about, as Meeks has put it, "with this look on his face like he's walking around an airport, lost." True, he had shaved ("It's a good idea to shave for TV games") and shed his flip-flops, his "Hawaii Five-O" baggy shirts and his board shorts for an outfit that looked vaguely coachlike. As his team raced onto the field, he gazed into the stands filled with screaming fans and wondered about the several thousand "cadets" from Texas A.&M. clustered in one end zone. They wear military uniforms and buzz cuts, holler in unison and stand at attention the entire game. "How come they get to pretend they are soldiers?" he asked. "The thing is, they aren't actually in the military. I ought to have Mike's Pirate School. The freshmen, all they get is the bandanna. When you're a senior, you get the sword and skull and crossbones. For homework, we'll work pirate maneuvers and stuff like that."

Be lost no longer, Mike Leach. This is a wake up call. This is not an end, but only a beginning. Go start that pirate school.