"I feel like standing in the sun, but it's dark outside, so I can't."
~Elaine Reid

“If you get down and out, just get in the kitchen and bake a cake.”
~Jean Strickland, 77, of Hartford, Alabama (thanks Margaret)

“Not what we have But what we enjoy, constitutes our abundance.”
~Epicurus

"Don't wait for inspiration. Go after it with a butterfly net, lasso, sweet treats, fishing rod, court orders, beguiling smells, and sincere flattery."
~Rob Brezsny

"You can't wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club."
~Jack London

"My wishes are hopes, wants, prayerlets to some master of the universe I have yet to give a name. They propel me through my days and my nights and keep me looking forward, squinting towards a sun-drenched horizon. If you wish and keep wishing, I like to think the odds are that a healthy abundance of them will come true."
~Anna Groth-Shive, Endless Yeses

"The last clear definite function of man--muscles aching to work, minds aching to create beyond the single need--this is man... For man, unlike any other thing organic or inorganic in the universe, grows beyond his work, walks up the stairs of his concepts, emerges ahead of his accomplishments. This you may say of man--when theories change and crash, when schools, philosophies, when narrow dark alleys of thought, national, religious, economic, grow and disintegrate, man reaches, stumbles forward, painfully, mistakenly sometimes. Having stepped forward, he may slip back, but only half a step, never the full step back."

~John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

"We either make ourselves miserable or we make ourselves happy. The amount of work is the same."
~Carlos Castaneda (thanks Mom)

"Day 2 back to work as in "The Working World" and I'm in New Orleans and all I really want to do is get on one of those fan boats and go swampin'!!... Work is for the birds."
~SKL, to me via text

"Going to work this morning at 5:30, and a temperature of 1 degree, really was not so great."
~Heather Toews, to me via text from North Idaho

"Trust that little voice in your head that says "Wouldn't it be interesting if.."; And then do it."
~Duane Michals

"If we are facing in the right direction, all we have to do is keep on walking."
~Buddhist Proverb

"Trust yourself. Create the kind of self that you will be happy to live with all your life. Make the most of yourself by fanning the tiny, inner sparks of possibility into flames of achievement."
~Golda Meir

"I ain't gonna baptize. I'm gonna work in the fiel's, in the green fiel's, an' I'm gonna be near to folks. I ain't gonna try to teach 'em nothin'. I'm gonna try to learn. Gonna learn why the folks walks in the grass, gonna hear em' talk, gonna hear 'em sing. Gonna listen to kids eatin' mush. Gonna hear husban' an' wife a-poundin' the mattress in the night. Gonna eat with 'em an' learn.' His eyes were wet and shining. 'Gonna lay in the grass, open an' honest with anybody that'll have me. Gonna cuss an' swear an' hear the poetry of folks talkin'. All that's holy, all that's what I didn' understan'. All them things is the good things."

~John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath

“Your children are not your children. / They are the sons and daughters of Life's longing for itself.”
~Kahlil Gibran

"Do you think there's any mystical significance in the fact that the word 'stressed' is 'desserts' spelled backwards?"
~Rob Brezsny

"It's time again. Tear up the violets and plant something more difficult to grow."
~James Schuyler