"Win as if you were used to it, Lose as if you enjoyed it for a change."
~Ralph Waldo Emerson (thanks Mel)

"I feel more like a kid than I did when I was a kid."
~Donnie Logan

"You are not in the universe; the universe is in you."
~Deepak Chopra

"The only thing better than butter, is fancy butter."
~Elaine Reid

"I still know in my heart with full confidence that I will be celebrating your 87th birthday with you in 1 week and 57 years."
~Taylor Rice, to me, via email

"Babbling is how the brook eventually reaches the ocean."
~me to Elaine Reid as she was apologizing for babbling

"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and there is only one of you in all time. This expression is unique, and if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium; and be lost. The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is, not how it compares with other expression. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.

No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than the others."
~Martha Graham (thanks Ry)

"Doors do not open when you stare at them and think about them, but rather when you turn the knob."
~Ilana Turner

"Don’t bend; don’t water it down; don’t try to make it logical; don’t edit your own soul according to fashion. Rather, follow your most intense obsessions mercilessly."
~Franz Kafka (thanks Elaine)

"Faith is not a state of fearlessness, but rather an ability to hold fear with the power of our awareness and not lose touch with that in us which is more than whatever we are afraid of."
~Richard Moss, M.D., The Mandala of Being

"Sometimes I try and imagine new genres of music. That’s a tough one. It’s like closing your eyes and trying to picture a new color. Surely the rainbow has accounted for every color already, right? Flying Lotus feels like he stuck a crowbar between yellow and green and is wedging them apart to make room for a new color. This color doesn’t have a name yet, but it’s there. Eventually it will have a name and Skittles will add it to their lineup."
~John Gillilan, ...And the World Laughs With You

"Inside every human being there is an overarching theme, a template for heroic living, a god or a goddess in embryo that yearns to be born. This is who we were meant to be, the self that we deny ourselves because most of us cannot see the field of limitless potential that is open to us. This is our best self, the egoless self, that bit of the universe acting through us for the good of all."
~Deepak Chopra

"It's always complicated when you go to Kansas."
~Rosalee Toews (aka Mom), after her and my father drove 3,000 miles to spend one day in Southwestern Kansas for my grandmother's birthday

"Rock n' roll ain't easy, but that don't matter none 'cause you ain't got a choice. Make music or turn to dust."
~me, hopeful romantics

"A relationship is an energetic alchemy that two or more people create together which has the potential to accentuate the closeness or distance of each from his or her true self. How close to, or how far from, our true selves we live determines the quality of the relationships we create."

~Richard Moss, MD, The Mandala of Being

"What I must do is all that concerns me, not what the people think. This rule, equally arduous in actual and in intellectual life, may serve for the whole distinction between greatness and meanness. It is the harder because you will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world's opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude."

~Ralph Waldo Emerson, Self-Reliance