"Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it."
~Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

"There are so many clues and feelings in the world that it makes a mystery and a mystery means there's a puzzle to be solved. Once you think like that you're hooked on probably finding a meaning, and there' many avenues in life where we're given little indications that the mystery can one day be solved. we get little proofs, — not the big proof — but the little proofs that keep us searching."
~David Lynch (thanks Sara)

"Speak the following lines out loud:
I love everything about me
I love my uncanny beauty and my bewildering pain
I love my hungry soul and my wounded longing
I love my flaws, my fears, and my scary frontiers

I will never forsake, betray, or deceive myself
I will always adore, forgive, and believe in myself
I will never refuse, abandon, or scorn myself
I will always amuse, delight, and redeem myself"
~Rob Brezsny

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. The world needs people who have come alive.”
~Howard Thurman (thanks Mel)

"To become wise, one must wish to have certain experiences and run, as it were, into their gaping jaws. This, of course, is very dangerous; many a wise guy has been swallowed."
~Friedrich Nietzsche (thanks Elaine)

"All lovers live by longing, and endure; summon a vision and declare it pure."
~Theodore Roethke

"Be yourself; everyone else is already taken."
~Oscar Wilde

"Look for the truth, whatever the truth may be--good, bad, or unsettling."
~Martha Graham, Blood Memory

"I know my deadline for deciding when my deadline will be, will be soon."
~Jamie Masters, on setting deadlines

"I can move objects with my mind if I use my hands."
~Demitri Martin (thanks Joey)

"This head dangle is definitely pushing the red wine around."

~John Gillilan, after hanging upside down

"But friendship is precious, not only in the shade, but in the sunshine of life; and thanks to a benevolent arrangement of things, the greater part of life is sunshine."

~Thomas Jefferson (thanks Anna)

"Don't ask what are you good at. Ask what are you good for. Or just ignore both sentences."
~Elaine Reid, Important Tips

"Beginnings are only difficult without any action."
~Byron (thanks Mel)

"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