"I saw on Oprah, yeah, you heard me, that trucks transporting hazardous chemicals from LA to Florida didn't want to come back empty so they'd rinse them out and bring back orange juice." ~Jimmy George Francis

"Clarity of mind means clarity of passion, too; this is why a great and clear mind loves ardently and sees distinctly what it loves." ~Blaise Pascal

"To fear love is to fear life, and those who fear life are already three parts dead." ~Bertrand Russell

"Be not the slave of your own past. Plunge into the sublime seas, dive deep and swim far, so you shall come back with self-respect, with new power, with an advanced experience that shall explain and overlook the old." ~Ralph Waldo Emerson

"He's got that look like he's running from something, but his bikes tapped out at 70." ~Fudge

"Ok, here's what I think -- I just want to lay it on the table, 'cause I don't do well with this beating around the bush bullshit. I'm leaving the country in a couple of days and after last night, I think it would be nice to make some sense of this if that is at all possible. I think you should come over and stop time with me." ~notes before I made a phone call to a boy circa 2004, found while looking through old notebooks

"Healing may not be so much about getting better, as about letting go of everything that isn't you - all of the expectations, all of the beliefs - and becoming who you are."
~Rachel Naomi Remen

"You've heard of people calling in sick. You may have even called in sick yourself. But have you ever thought of calling in well? It would go like this: you'd call the boss and say, 'Listen, I've been sick ever since I started working here, but today I'm well and won't be in anymore.' Call in well."
~Tom Robbins, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (thanks Phil)

“To keep our faces toward change and behave like free spirits in the presence of fate is strength undefeatable”
~Helen Keller (thanks Mom)

"I walk without flinching through the burning cathedral of the summer. My bank of wild grass is majestic and full of music. It is a fire that solitude presses against my lips." ~Violette Leduc

"He's fixed and he reads magazines." ~overheard at the Hollywood Forever Cinespia screening

~in front of Skylight Books

"Everyone's got these ideas brewing that they might want to try out, and I just recommend people to give it a shot. . . You don't have to drive around the country and give away ice cream, but if you've got something you've been thinking about for a long time, if you've got that dream, give it a shot."
~Ice Cream Man Matt Allen, Paste Summer-Festival Guide

"Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, 'This is what I need.' It may look like a wreck, but go at it as though it were an opportunity, a challenge. If you bring love to that moment—not discouragement—you will find the strength there. Any disaster you can survive is an improvement in your character, your stature, and your life. What a privilege!! This is when the spontaneity of your own nature will have a chance to flow. Then, when looking back at your life, you will see that the moments which seemed to be great failures, followed by wreckage, were the incidents that shaped the life you have now. You’ll see this is really true. Nothing can happen to you that is not positive. Even though it looks and feels at the moment like a negative crisis, it is not. The crisis throws you back, and when you are required to exhibit strength, it comes." ~Joseph Campbell

"Maturity includes the recognition that no one is going to see anything in us that we don't see in ourselves. Stop waiting for a producer. Produce yourself." ~Marianne Williamson

"Love is what we were born with. Fear is what we learned here." ~Marianne Williamson

"I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in."
~John Muir"

"I painted my face 'cause I got too drunk too quick."
~drunk guy at a bbq, with his face painted (obviously)

"Solitude is such a potential thing. We hear voices in solitude, we never hear in the hurry and turmoil of life; we receive counsels and comforts, we get under no other condition . . .” ~Amelia E. Barr

"Conversation enriches the understanding, but solitude is the school of genius; and the uniformity of a work denotes the hand of a single artist." ~Edward Gibbon (thanks Anna)

"I'm younger and more hip to things, like technology and joke books." ~Phil Eastman

"But we're fearful people, the best of us. We see a newborn moth unwrapping itself and announce, Look children, a miracle! But let an irreversible wound be knit back to seamlessness? We won't even see it, though we look at it every day." ~Leif Enger, Peace Like a River

"I slept in until noon. Nothing good happens before noon anyway.

That is a little play on what my dad used to say about my curfew --“Nothing good happens after midnight – you don’t need to be out with the riff-raff.” He was so wrong. Do you know how many “buyers” don’t get out of their dishwashing jobs until after midnight? Do you know how many fistfights I got to see after midnight (slightly more than I saw in daylight)? If I hadn’t been practicing my rebellion, I wouldn’t have seen D___ J____ punch out S____ H____n’s windshield in front of M___ H_______ house on that warm august evening in ‘91. Valuable lesson learned: you may not remember the reason for the fight but you always remember the damage." ~KayeKillA

"I feel my burger pressing against my spine."
~Anna Groth-Shive, post Double-Double Animal Style

“In everyone's life, at some time, our inner fire goes out. It is then burst into flame by an encounter with another human being. We should all be thankful for those people who rekindle the inner spirit.” ~Albert Schweitzer (thanks Mom)

"When I met you, I jumped up and down inside."
~Mark Nehlich to his sidekick Heather Toews

"Friendship with oneself is all-important, because without it one cannot be friends with anyone else in the world."
~Eleanor Roosevelt (thanks Mom)

“Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma - which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of other's opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary." ~Steve Jobs

“Your daily life is your temple and your religion. When you enter into it take with you your all.” ~Kahlil Gibran

"I don't want to make money, I just want to be wonderful." ~Norma Jean Mortenson (thanks Sara)