"It's the courage to look at something and say, however bad it is, it isn't bad infinitely. I'm not me minus anything, I'm me plus this experience. You still get to write the book, it's going to have some chapters you might not have anticipated, but it's still your story." ~Michael J. Fox (thanks Mom)

"Forsan et haec olim meminisse juvabit."

"Perhaps someday we will look back fondly on even these things." ~Virgil, Book 1 of The Aeneid (thanks Charlie)

~somewhere in Los Angeles, taken by jG Francis

“Don't go around saying the world owes you a living; the world owes you nothing; it was here first.” ~Mark Twain

"Courage is resistance to fear, mastery of fear -- not absence of fear." ~Mark Twain

"It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat." ~Theodore Roosevelt

“Courageous, untroubled, mocking and violent-that is what Wisdom wants us to be. Wisdom is a woman, and loves only a warrior.” ~Friedrich Nietzsche

"...in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance."
~Reverend Joseph E. Lowery

“Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through. Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it. This is a kind of death.” ~Anais Nin

"Texas is bigger than France."
~bumper sticker on a car outside of Fredricksburg, TX

"Loneliness can be conquered only by those who can bear solitude." ~Paul Tillich

"If you liked things easy you and I would be swapping goverment cheese and hand-me-downs from our seven children birthed of construction worker stock. If good things were easy we'd be 300 lbs and pushing our seventh case of Kingdongs and Ringdings. If good things were easy I'd never shower.... oh wait..." ~SKL, the sage, my friend, via text

"There's so many feet where my feet are."
~drunk dude behind me while watching Beach House at SxSW

“We love because it's the only true adventure.” ~Nikki Giovanni

"Dude, can you listen to the sound of Texas for one second!" ~Brian Girecky, to Ben Pringle in his haste for more tunes somewhere along Highway 290

"Kick back and succeed." ~Parry Gripp's life mantra and the title for his autobiography (in progress)

"Hello babies. Welcome to Earth. It's hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It's round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you've got about a hundred years here. There's only one rule that I know of, babies 'God damn it you've got to be kind.'" ~Kurt Vonnegut Jr., 1922-2007

"'How are we going to make it, Stobbs?'"
"'Well, as long as I've got that shower, I've got it made.'"
"'Why don't you get a job?'"
"'A job? Don't talk like a crazy man.'"
~Charles Bukowski, Hot Water Music

"The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity. The fears are paper tigers. You can do anything you decide to do. You can act to change and control your life; and the procedure , the process is its own reward." ~Amelia Earhart

“I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process.” ~Vincent van Gogh

"Peace is a daily, a weekly, a monthly process, gradually changing opinions, slowly eroding old barriers, quietly building new structures." ~John F. Kennedy

“The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.” ~Julia Cameron

“It is art that makes life, makes interest, makes importance and I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of its process.” ~Max Eastman

“Perhaps love is the process of my leading you gently back to yourself” ~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

"Success is to be measured not so much by the position that one has reached in life as by the obstacles which he has overcome while trying to succeed." ~Booker T. Washington

"As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live." ~Goethe

"The first step on the journey to wisdom is following your heart." ~Bea Volpe (my mom's friend who is "affectionately known as 'Queen Bea' by those blessed enough to be her friend")

"Man is so made that whenever anything fires his soul, impossibilities vanish." ~Jean de la Fontaine

"It is not because things are difficult that we do not dare, it is because we do not dare that they are difficult." ~Seneca

"To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." ~Tennyson

"Everything was well done in our house. There was always the smell of something burning."
~jG Francis and the culinary habits of his childhood home