"If we cannot live with our need to renew agreements we have made, we break the only promise we really owe each other--to be truthful." ~Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation

"If we are never consumed by the transforming fire of desires, we risk falling in love with the sweet ache of longing, the daydream of 'what if . . .' or 'some day . . ."
~Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation

"The world offers itself to me in a thousands ways, and I ache with an awareness of how infrequently I am able to receive more than a small fraction of what is offered, of how often I reject what is because I feel it is not good enough."
~Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation

"Character - the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life - is the source from which self respect springs."
~Joan Didion, Slouching Towards Bethlehem

"All sanity depends on this: that it should be a delight to feel heat strike the skin, a delight to stand upright, knowing the bones are moving easily under the flesh." ~Doris Lessing

"Zero dollars. Zero sense."
~Jamie Masters, on the arithmetic of all the not-so-smart romantic choices made in the past

"My advice to all young writers is quite simple. I would caution them never to evade a new experience. I would urge them to live life in the raw, to grapple with it bravely, to attack it with naked fists." ~John Fante, Ask the Dust

"At the height of laughter, the universe is flung into a kaleidoscope of new possibilities." ~Jean Houston

"People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built." ~Eleanor Roosevelt

"Do not weep; do not wax indignant. Understand."
~Baruch Spinoza

"Happiness arises in a state of peace, not of tumult."
~Ann Radcliffe

"I'm not gonna text while I'm going around a curve, 'cause I respect your life."
~Sara Kaye Larson to me (the passenger), driving to Mono Lake

"I found out eventually why I was put on this earth. I was put on this earth to write. And as Thomas Carlyle said, 'Happy is the man who has found his work.' So I'm happy, and I hope everybody else finds that, too." ~Frank McCourt (thanks Sara)

"You read me like a book - like a children's book with really large print." ~Philip Eastman to me

"My friends had cows named 'Dinner' and 'Taco'."
~Sara Kaye Larson, on growing up in Fowlerville, Michigan

"Los Angeles, give me some of you! Los Angeles come to me the way I came to you, my feet over your streets, you pretty town I loved you so much, you sad flower in the sand, you pretty town." ~John Fante, Ask the Dust

(thanks Sara)

"Had anyone told me 4 months ago I'd be homeless, jobless, girlfriendless, carless (driving a rented mini-van), making more money than I have ever made, facing every fear I have ever known, pursing my deepest dreams, and changing my entire life fourteen hundred and forty degrees (that's eight 180's) all on my own, I would have punched them in the face. This shit is bananas!" ~jG Francis to me, via text

"If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance."
~George Bernard Shaw

“I aim to be funny, I aim to be bad, it turns out I’m just awesome. Oops.” ~Jason Schymick

"Joy is not in things, it is in us." ~Richard Wagner

"No price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself." ~Friedrich Nietzsche

"Bliss cannot be disturbed by gain or loss." ~Yogi Tea bag

"Never refuse any advance of friendship, for if nine out of ten bring you nothing, one alone may repay you."
~Madame de Tencin

"Logic just doesn't make any sense."
~Regan Blayne, on following your heart

"Chance is always powerful. Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it, there will be a fish." ~Ovid

"You're alive. Do something. The directive in life, the moral imperative was so uncomplicated. It could be expressed in single words, not complete sentences. It sounded like this: Look. Listen. Choose. Act." ~Barbara Hall

"Self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice." ~Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"Have no friends not equal to yourself." ~Confucius

"Only as high as I reach can I grow, only as far as I seek can I go, only as deep as I look can I see, only as much as I dream can I be." ~Karen Ravn

"What you are searching for, you are."
~Gangaji, The Diamond in Your Pocket: Discovering Your True Radiance (thanks Jamie)