Anne Lamott

There's a lovely Hasidic story of a rabbi who always told his people that if they studied the Torah, it would put Scripture on their hearts. One of them asked, "Why on our hearts, and not in them?" The rabbi answered, "Only God can put Scripture inside. But reading sacred text can put it on your hearts, and then when your hearts break, the holy words will fall inside."

Anne Lamott

I have only mediocre self-esteem when I am doing things that I am good at or that don't require any self-esteem.

- Plan B: Further thoughts on faith

Thomas Edison

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.

Joyce Sutphen

The heart remembers everything it loved and gave away,
everything it lost and found again, and everyone
it loved, the heart cannot forget.

--from "What the Heart Cannot Forget," Coming Back to the Body (2000)

Donna Tartt

This is something that the novel does better than any other art form: reproducing the inner life and the inner experience of another person...Unlike movies, where we're always onlookers, in novels we have the experience of being someone else: knowing another person's soul from the inside. No other art form does that.

--Interview for Powell's Indiespensible, Vol. 43 (November 2013)

Alan Alda

Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won't come in.

Brené Brown

Vulnerability is not weakness.
Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity, and change.

I did not learn about vulnerability and courage and creativity and innovation from studying vulnerability, I learned about these things from studying shame.

Henry Ford

Chop your own wood and it will warm you twice.

Tom Wilson

You can complain because roses have thorns, or you can rejoice because thorns have roses.

Elie Wiesel

Ultimately, the only power to which man should aspire is that which he exercises over himself. 

Barbara Crooker

...[T]his has been a day of grace
in the dead of winter,
the hard knuckle of the year,
a day that unwrapped itself
like an unexpected gift,
and the stars turn on,
order themselves
into the winter night.

--an excerpt from "Ordinary Life" (2001)

Mama Zara Kushandwizdom

Create positive space around you,
even if its in your mind.
You must have an environment of good energy,
in order to give that.

John Muir

We all travel the milky way together, trees and men...trees are travellers, in the ordinary sense. They make journeys, not very extensive ones, it is true: but our own little comes and goes are only little more than tree-wavings -- many of them not so much. 

Abraham Hicks

Your work is not to make it happen, your work is to let it happen. And you let it happen by possibility thinking, not negative thinking...by hopeful thinking, not doubtful thinking...by believing it will come, rather than doubting it will come...By talking yourself into feeling good!

Paul Zimmer

Dog Music 

Amongst dogs are listeners and singers.

My big dog sang with me so purely,

puckering her ruffled lips into an O,

beginning with small, swallowing sounds

like Coltrane musing, then rising to power

and resonance, gulping air to continue—

her passion and sense of flawless form—

singing with me, but mostly for the art of dogs.

We joined in many fine songs—"Stardust,"

"Naima," "The Trout," "Jeg elsker Dig," "Perdido."

She was a great master and died young,

leaving me with unrelieved grief,

her talents known only to a few.

Now I have a small dog who does not sing

but listens with discernment, requiring

skill and spirit in my falsetto voice.

When I sing her name and words of love,

Andante, con brio, vivace, adagio,

at times she is so moved she turns

to place her paw across her snout,

closing her eyes, sighing like a girl

I held and danced with years ago.

But I am a pretender to dog music.

Indeed, true strains rise only from

the rich, red chambers of a canine heart;

these melodies best when the moon is up,

listeners and singers together and apart,

beyond friendship and anger,

far from any human imposter—

songs of bones, turds, conquests,

hunts and scents, ballads of

long nights lifting to starlight.

--from Crossing to Sunlight Revisited (2007)