"[It is] an inalienable, constitutional, and natural right to love whom I may, to love as long or as short a period as I can, and to change that love every day if I please!"

~Victoria Claflin Woodhull, a nineteenth-century American feminists, an advocate for free love and the first female candidate for president

"A musician must make music, an artist must paint, a poet must write, if he is to be ultimately at peace with himself. What a man can be, he must be."

~sent to me via text from Heather Toews

...

"Ooh, who said that?" ~me in response

...

"Crap. I forgot to get that part. I read it in a random thing at Jamba Juice." ~Heather Toews

(the quote is by A.H. Maslow)

"It's Saturday night and I'm feelin' alright! I'm gonna get Thai and watch some TV! Yeah! Are you with me single bitches?!"

~Regan Blayne, to me, via text

"I look at her and I wanna have sex with her... or anyone." ~Richard McIntosh, on actress Christina Hendricks, aka Joan from Madmen

"There's so much waste in the world, I like to put rubbish to good use. A lot of people say I'm into my second childhood, but I don't think I ever got out of my first. Getting carried away is the bother of invention."
~John Ward of Northamptonshire, a self-described junkist who builds giant contraptions from other people's rubbish, like the "moon buggy" which he made out of an old bed, a number of hair dryers and vacuum cleaners, a wicker linen basket, a tumble dryer, a baby carriage, and various other parts with sirens and flashing lights. From Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness

"Holy cow! I'm sitting on beans!"
~Ron Toews (aka Dad), on having difficulties eating his burrito

"Life isn't about waiting for the storm to pass. It's about learning to dance in the rain." ~Anonymous (thanks Mom)

"I tweaked out about my living situation the other night, so I decided to sell everything I own." ~Conner McKinley

"Everyone knows when you eat in the dark at the movie theater it doesn't count." ~Regan Blayne

"You do not need special gurus or Babas to grow. Teachers come in all forms and disguises. Children, the terminally ill, a cleaning woman. All the theories and science in the world could not help anyone as much as one human unafraid to open his heart to another." ~Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (thanks Mom)

"The deepest desires of the soul are rarely concerned with the practical details of mortgage payments, pension plans, prior commitments, past honors, or others' opinions."

~Oriah Mountain Dreamer

"When I lived with money, I was always lacking--money represents lack. Money represents things in the past (debt) and things in the future (credit), but money never represents what is present."

~Daniel Suelo, who lives in a cave near Moab, Utah, and has gone without using money since 2000 (thanks Sara)

"Be careful what you say, 'cause sometimes you get weird." ~Rosalee Toews (aka Mom), to Ron Toews (aka Dad), on wine infused conversations

"The white doesn't look right." ~Ron Toews (aka Dad), to me, on whether or not a really old Reese's Peanut Butter Cup was still safe to eat

"I don't have a problem with spanking you in public!"
~a mother to her defiant daughter in a JCPenny in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho

"When you are on your track of life and you run into beautiful men, don't pass your torch to them--it's not their marathon. Men are here to cheer us on and if they don't want to do that, they need to step to the side." ~Regan Blayne, to me, via text

"Projection makes perception. The world you see is what you gave it, nothing more than that. It is the witness to your state of mind, the outward picture of an inward condition. As a man thinketh, so does he perceive. Therefore, seek not to change the world, but choose to change your mind about the world." ~Anonymous

"You wanna know how to feel?... Feel awesome. Why? Because who gives a crap?" ~Nic Michaels (thanks Phil)

"You're the best sister in the world! You're here!"
~Heather Toews, to me, after driving 1,400 miles to surprise her for her birthday

"You believe you're going to find true love, right?" ~me
. . .

"Well, I think there's only one person for everyone, and I don't know where mine is... I've been looking or him at P.F. Chang's."
~Regan Blayne

"I already had a bike and one day I lay down on the sofa and said to myself, 'I want a horse.' So I bought a rocking horse for fifteen dollars and cut it in half and put it on the bike."
~Al Joyner, on "Disco Kid", his half bicycle, half rocking horse which he rides around Virginia Beach pulling behind him a milk crate mounted on a golf cart. From Eccentrics: A Study of Sanity and Strangeness

"Dickens and I, we've always understood each other, or, I suppose I've understood him--him not really getting the chance to understand me, being dead and all." ~me to Charlie, via chat

"Still there are moments when one feels free from one's own identification with human limitations and inadequacies. At such moments, one imagines that one stands on some small spot of some small planet, gazing in amazement at the cold yet profoundly moving beauty of the eternal, the unfathomable: life and death flow into one, and there is neither evolution nor destiny; only being." ~Albert Einstein (thanks Mom)

(thanks Sara)

"I'm actually a pretty amazing dancer... I just need some space." ~Kristoffer Stephen Hope Moyes

"One of two things happen in my life, people come closer or they run away." ~me to a friend

"Sometimes this is the only choice we have--to refuse or agree to stay awake as we are torn open by what is beyond our control. And I found that I can do it, if I choose--I can stay awake and let the sorrows of the world tear me apart and then allow the joys to put me back together, different from before but whole once again."
~Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation

"At the end of the day, the failure I find the hardest to live with is the one that I made because I lacked the courage to let love take me where it will. And this mistake cannot be corrected by trying harder. It requires that I surrender to that which is larger than myself, that I be willing to move ahead where I am afraid of making mistakes. It requires telling the truth about my worst failures and saying, when I have no faith that anyone or anything is listening, 'I don't know how to live with this, how to forgive myself. I cannot do this with my will. Help me."

~Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation

"It takes courage to be willing to meet myself over and over again, seeing in my own face more beauty and grace and ability to love than I had hoped for, more judgment and impatience and need than I had feared. I forget that it does not matter how far or how fast I move, but only how much of myself I take along for the journey."

~Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation

"If we are strong enough to be weak enough, we are given a wound that never heals. It is a gift that keeps the heart open." ~Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation

"I am a good student. I am a tired woman."

~Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Invitation