"For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice." ~T.S. Eliot

"There is no passion to be found in playing small--in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living." ~Nelson Mandela

"Blessed are the curious for they shall have adventures" ~Lovelle Drachman (thanks Sara)

"Free biscuit and gravy combo with 75 gallons of gas."
~Boise Stage Shop marquee on highway 84

"Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify, simplify!" ~Henry David Thoreau

"Don't put your faith in anyone. You have it all inside you. You're always asking the masters. Why don't you ask yourselves? Forget the masters." ~J. Krishnamurti

"The best way to spread Christmas Cheer, is singing loud for all to hear." ~Buddy, Elf

"But I do have an intimate and vivid relationship with Jesus Christ. How
could I not? He was a champion of women's rights, an antidote to the
established and corrupt political order, and a radical spiritual activist who
worked outside religious institutions.

The dude owned nothing and was a passionate advocate for the poor and
underprivileged. He was uncompromisingly opposed to violence and war.

Besides that, he was a master of love and he devoted his life to serving
the Divine Intelligence.

He even went so far as to say, "Love your enemies, do good to those who
hate you, bless those who curse you, and pray for those who mistreat
you."

I want to be like Jesus Christ when I grow up!"

~Rob Brezsny, a "Goddess-worshiping tantric Sufi Qabalist pagan who hangs around with Zen trickster witches and espouses a socialist libertarian political philosophy"

"I will tell you something I have never told anyone, I have knitted in my life." ~Ron Toews (aka Dad), a man's man admitting to doing what he was raised to believe was strictly a woman's hobby

"I know a kid who got so tired opening presents last year, he had to take a break."
~Michele McIntire, on the excess of holidays

"All of Creation is holding its breath at this deep time, anticipating the
birth, within each human heart, of wonder and a willingness to cooperate
with everything... Each moment awaits our imaginative dedication.
So let's toss all that is neither beautiful nor useful into the roiling cauldron
of re-birth, that Time is so kindly providing us. Let's compost all past-
patterns of self-sabotage, personal and collective, for starters.
And let's bow at the threshold of this New Year, to release and redeem all
that we do not wish to take with us through the door.
~Caroline Casey (thanks Sara)

"This is going to be an extra snowy winter. Snowier than most. Mitch Album. That's how they get you. Too much ice in the cups. Cheesey potatoes. Kohls. Specials. Poinsettias. Deals. Wrapping paper."
~Sara Kaye, KayeKillA

"Lean into your fears, dare them to do their worst and cut them down when they try. If you don't they'll clone themselves, mushroom till they surround you, choke the road to the life you want." ~Richard Bach

"I hope I don't go into labor before they plow the streets." ~Michele McIntire via email, very much pregnant and stuck in over 2 feet of snow in Idaho

"Scientists have confirmed what we all knew: You do indeed have a little voice in your head that warns you when you're about to do something dumb. It's called the anterior cingulate cortex, according to white-coated authorities at Carnegie-Mellon University. If you're receptive to it, it's as good as having a guardian angel." ~Rob Brezsny, PRONOIA Is the Antidote for Paranoia: How the Whole World Is Conspiring to Shower You with Blessings

"Fakt 914: Alcohol can cause drunkenness and nudity."
~from Harvie Krumpet's fakt book

"Last summer, I met a two-lane hippy named Katie that had just left the Oregon circus to live on a small space of NPS federal dirt in Joshua Tree and if she can do it, I can."
~Sara Kaye aka kayekilla, on her plans for '09

"In third grade, my teacher informed me that I have Asperger's syndrome. I said, "So what? Do you know that Godzilla's suit weighs one hundred and eighty-eight pounds?"
~Joshua Yuchasz, in his essay for This I Believe II

"We see trees. What more do we need?"
~Maira Kalman, The Principles of Uncertainty

"You must never doubt the one you love.
But they might not be telling you the truth.
Never mind that. You tell them the truth.
What do you mean?
You can't be another person's honesty, child, but you can be your own.
So what should I say?
When?
When I love someone?
You should say it."
~Jeanette Winterson, Lighthousekeeping

"I believe this is something all of us can do: Try to be happy within the context of the life we're actually living. Happiness is not a situation to be longed for, or a convergence of lucky happenstance. Through the power of our own minds, we can help ourselves."
~Wayne Coyne, This I Believe II, edited by Jay Allison and Dan Gediman

"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it." ~Pablo Picasso (thanks Ben)

"I am a big supporter of turning the car around, walking down side streets, getting lost and just rolling with it, avoiding the interstate, taking the long route, two lane highways, two-stroke travel, dirt road travel, horseback, camelback, railway, buses with chickens, boats with strangers, canoes for one, canoes for two, flip flops, risking getting stuck, rolling down the windows, and the adventures that almost surely follow... " ~jG Francis, atthetrophycase

"You mean to tell me I have to push a button THREE F***ING times to make ONE letter?!!!"
~Ron Toews (aka Dad), on his total lack of enthusiasm for text messaging as a means of communication.

"Don't wait for it... Create a world, your world. Alone. Stand alone. Create. And then the love will come to you, then it comes to you." ~Anais Nin, The Diary of Anais Nin

"It is an important and popular fact that things are not always what they seem. For instance, on the planet Earth, man had always assumed that he was more intelligent than dolphins because he had achieved so much -- the wheel, New York, wars, and so on -- whilst all the dolphins had ever done was muck about in the water having a good time. But conversely, the dolphins had always believed that they were far more intelligent than man -- for the precisely the same reasons."
~Douglas Adams

"I wrote a paper on deviled eggs... it was five pages, single spaced." ~Mark Nehlich, University of Idaho college student and deviled egg scholar

"Factory work's easier on the back, and I don't mind it, understand, but a man becomes what he does. Got to watch that. That's why I keep at farmin', although the crops haven't ever throve. It's the doin' that's important." ~Madison Wheeler outside Nameless, Tennessee, in Blue Highways

"The task of genius, and humanity is nothing if not genius, is to keep the miracle alive, to live always in the miracle, to make the miracle more and more miraculous, to swear allegiance to nothing, but live only miraculously, think only miraculously, die miraculously." ~Henry Miller

"You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover will be yourself." ~Alan Alda

"Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labour and to wait."
~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow