“I hold this to be the highest task for a bond between two people: that each protects the solitude of the other”
~Rainer Maria Rilke

"I've managed to live my life among multiple contradictions, without ever trying to rationalize or resolve them; they're a part of me and part of the fundamental ambiguity of all things." ~Luis Bunuel (thanks Sara)

“One doesn’t discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”
~Andre Gide (thanks Sara)

"roll with the roll. pretend you're a burn-out. talk slow, walk like you're stepping on clouds, pay attention to colors and trees and say things like, "that bird sounds cooooool", only be concerned with taking your shoes off and eating well and getting drunk on wine starting at 5pm. and eventually information will be passed along telling/showing you how to deal with all this stuff you don't know how to process right now. that's my advice."
~the ever brilliant, Jamie Masters, to me, via email

"Pursue your own interests freely." ~Beth Hoeckel

"It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power." ~Alan Cohen

"Don't ever diss me on a national holiday." ~Regan Blayne

"I won't ever try and fix you, you are unbroken. I will just watch you grow." ~Phil Eastman

"Before I met you I didn't really like girls... or guys."
~Mark Nehlich to his girlfriend Heather, aaaaw.

"Do you think being a ballet dancer would be better than being a man?" ~Billy Elliot

"We can't drop the baby!" ~me to my dear sister, Heather, in reference to getting drunk and having my dear friend, Michele, bring her dear baby, Alistair, over.

"How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world."
~Ann Frank (thanks Mom)

"Are you on God's Facebook?" ~reader board for Church of the Nazarene in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

"Whether or not you believe in the universe, the universe believes in you."
~Unknown (Just came across this scribbled in my journal. It could have been a lush line I read in a forgotten book, or something a wise friend said, or perhaps something I realized full of whiskey late one night. Wish I could give credit where credit is due...)

"I'm cool with any band that has 20 good songs."
~Mark Nehlich, on The Cars

"There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one's self." ~Benjamin Franklin

"Children are like little bank robbers." ~Heather Toews

"Without music, life would be an error."
~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzche (thanks Mom)

"Life is not easy for any of us. But what of that? We must have perseverance and above all confidence in ourselves. We must believe that we are gifted for something, and that this thing, at whatever cost, must be attained." ~Marie Curie

"Alas for those that never sing,
But die with all their music in them!"
~Oliver Wendell Holmes

"My sister, Swede, who often sees to the nub, offered this: People fear miracles because they fear being changed -- though ignoring them will change you also. Swede said another thing, too, and it rang in me like a bell: No miracle happens without a witness. Someone to declare, Here's what I saw. Here's how it went. Make of it what you will."
~Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

"This guy didn't like his job, so he quit, and now he climbs rocks! See, he's his own man! He grabs life by the throat and lives on his own terms!"
~from Calvin and Hobbes (thanks Heather)

"It's not what you look at that matters, it's what you see." ~Henry David Thoreau (thanks Mom)

“Since the dawn of parking lots, man has sought to fill his gut with food and alcohol in anticipation of watching others exercise." ~Homer Simpson

"Everything happens all the time." ~Jess Lane

"Turn that badittude into radittude." ~Whitney Martin

"Seeing no resolution to my existential recognition of loss, I decide to eat lunch."
~Chuck Klosterman, Killing Yourself to Live

"Love is my double or nothing."
~Elizabeth Smart, By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

"One must think like a hero to behave like a merely decent human being." ~May Sarton (thanks Sara)

"Not doing what is scary is the scariest idea of all." ~me

"How stupid I'd been to think of sharks when there had been walruses waiting for me all this time."
~Laurie Foos, Portrait of the Walrus by a Young Artist