"There's always room for improvement –
it's the biggest room in the house."
— Louise Heath Leber

"Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to 'jump at the sun.' We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground. "
— Zora Neale Hurston

"A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty."
— Winston S. Churchill

"Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much"
— Helen Keller

"Organization is what you do before you do something, so that when you do it, it’s not all mixed up."
— A.A. Milne

"If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about other people"
— Virginia Woolf

"You may be disappointed if you fail, but you are doomed if you don’t try."
— Beverly Sills

"If I were asked to give what I consider the single most useful bit of advice for all humanity, it would be this: Expect trouble as an inevitable part of life, and when it comes, hold your head high. Look it squarely in the eye, and say, 'I will be bigger than you. You cannot defeat me.'"
— Ann Landers

"The world we have created is a product of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking."
— Albert Einstein

"The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - which you had thought special and particular to you. And now, here it is, set down by someone else, a person you have never met, someone even who is long dead. And it is as if a hand has come out, and taken yours"
— Alan Bennett (The History Boys: The Film)

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is full also of the overcoming of it."
— Helen Keller

"Now today, moment by moment, realize that each person and event that happens is life for you. Life is not somewhere else. See how fully you can accept the life that presents itself to you now."
— Brenda Shoshanna

"Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Suffering follows an evil thought as the wheels of a cart follow the oxen that draws it.
Our life is shaped by our mind; we become what we think. Joy follows a pure thought like a shadow that never leaves."
— Siddhārtha Gautama

"Zen does not confuse spirituality with thinking about God while one is peeling potatoes. Zen spirituality is just to peel the potatoes."
— Alan Wilson Watts

"The only Zen you find on tops of mountains is the Zen you bring there."
— Robert M. Pirsig

"If indeed it's a race
Then the chicks do the most
It isn't a brag
Or an estrogen boast
It's the women who've led me
With big open hearts
If not for their love
I'd have failed at the start.
And it's not just the mothers
I speak of them ALL
It's a woman there first
When somebody falls.

The multi of tasking
That's easy to tease
I dare a great man
To try it all, PLEASE!
So this is my shout out
My rallying cry
To women all over
I hold you up high
And though there are others
Who'll think this poem strange
It's the women who plant
The root of big change."
— Jamie Lee Curtis

"You can safely assume you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do."
— Anne Lamott

"It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life."
— Anne Lamott (Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith)

"Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They depen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul. When writers make us shake our heads with the exactness of their prose and their truths, and even make us laugh about ourselves or life, our buoyancy is restored. We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It's like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can't stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship."
— Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

"Laughter is carbonated holiness."
— Anne Lamott

"For some of us, books are as important as almost anything else on earth. What a miracle it is that out of these small, flat, rigid squares of paper unfolds world after world after world, worlds that sing to you, comfort and quiet or excite you. Books help us understand who we are and how we are to behave. They show us what community and friendship mean; they show us how to live and die."
— Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

"Your problem is how you are going to spend this one and precious life you have been issued. Whether you're going to spend it trying to look good and creating the illusion that you have power over circumstances, or whether you are going to taste it, enjoy it and find out the truth about who you are.

From her graduation commencement address to Berkeley."
— Anne Lamott

"Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere."
— Anne Lamott (Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

"I think joy and sweetness and affection are a spiritual path. We're here to know God, to love and serve God, and to be blown away by the beauty and miracle of nature. You just have to get rid of so much baggage to be light enough to dance, to sing, to play. You don't have time to carry grudges; you don't have time to cling to the need to be right.
- author Anne Lamott, in a recent interview. (Source: The Washington Times)"
— Anne Lamott

"Lighthouses don’t go running all over an island looking for boats to save; they just stand there shining."
— Anne Lamott

"I thought such awful thoughts that I cannot even say them out loud because they would make Jesus want to drink gin straight out of the cat dish."
— Anne Lamott

"Certainty is missing the point entirely."
— Anne Lamott (Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith)

"Jealousy always has been my cross, the weakness and woundedness in me that has most often caused me to feel ugly and unlovable, like the Bad Seed. I’ve had many years of recovery and therapy, years filled with intimate and devoted friendships, yet I still struggle. I know that when someone gets a big slice of pie, it doesn’t mean there’s less for me. In fact, I know that there isn’t even a pie, that there’s plenty to go around, enough food and love and air.

But I don’t believe it for a second.

I secretly believe there’s a pie. I will go to my grave brandishing my fork.
(Page 110)



Mel was somewhat surprised that as a Christina I so staunchly agreed with him about assisted suicide: I believe that life is a kind of Earth School, so even though assisted suicide means you’re getting out early, before the term ends, you’re going to be leaving anyway, so who says it isn’t okay to take an incomplete in the course.
(Page 94)"
— Anne Lamott (Grace [Eventually]: Thoughts on Faith)

"If you want to make God laugh, tell her your plans."
— Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

"You are lucky to be one of those people who wishes to build sand castles with words, who is willing to create a place where your imagination can wander. We build this place with the sand of memories; these castles are our memories and inventiveness made tangible. So part of us believes that when the tide starts coming in, we won't really have lost anything, because actually only a symbol of it was there in the sand. Another part of us thinks we'll figure out a way to divert the ocean. This is what separates artists from ordinary people: the belief, deep in our hearts, that if we build our castles well enough, somehow the ocean won't wash them away. I think this is a wonderful kind of person to be."
— Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

"You can tell if people are following Jesus, because they are fedding the poor, sharing their wealth, and trying to get everyone medical insurance."
— Anne Lamott

"We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this."
— Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

"Peace is joy at rest. Joy is peace on its feet.
quoting her pastor in Salon, April 25, 2003"
— Anne Lamott

"I remember staring at my son endlessly when he was an infant, stunned by his very existence, wondering where on earth he had come from."
— Anne Lamott (Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith)

"The problem is acceptance, which is something we're taught not to do. We're taught to improve uncomfortable situations, to change things, alleviate unpleasant feelings. But if you accept the reality that you have been given- that you are not in a productive creative period- you free yourself to begin filling up again."
— Anne Lamott (Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life)

"And she is going to dance, dance hungry, dance full, dance each cold astonishing moment, now when she is young and again when she is old."
— Anne Lamott

"He got me a cup of tea with honey, toast with honey, yogurt with honey, like I was John the Baptist with the flu."
— Anne Lamott

"'I liked those ladies! They were helpers, and they danced.' These are the words I want on my gravestone: that I was a helper, and that I danced."
— Anne Lamott (Grace [Eventually]: Thoughts on Faith)

"Sometimes grace works like water wings when you feel you are sinking."
— Anne Lamott (Grace [Eventually]: Thoughts on Faith)

"Grace arrived, like the big, loopy stitches with which a grandmotherly stranger might baste your hem temporarily."
— Anne Lamott

"As a Christian and a feminist, the most important message I can carry and fight for is the sacredness of each human life, and reproductive rights for all women are a crucial part of that. It is a moral necessity that we not be forced to bring children into the world for whom we cannot be responsible and adoring and present. We must not inflict life on children who will be resented; we must not inflict unwanted children on society."
— Anne Lamott

"It is never too late to be what you might have been."
— George Eliot

"A friend is one to whom one may pour out the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that gentle hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping, and with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away."
— George Eliot

"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult for each other?"
— George Eliot

"It is always fatal to have music or poetry interrupted."
— George Eliot (Middlemarch)

"Blessed is the influence of one true, loving human soul on another."
— George Eliot

"What greater thing is there for two human souls, than to feel that they are joined for life--to strengthen each other in all labor, to rest on each other in all sorrow, to minister to each other in all pain, to be one with each other in silent unspeakable memories at the moment of the last parting?"
— George Eliot

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
— Maya Angelou

"There is no greater agony than bearing an untold story inside you."
— Maya Angelou

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel."
— Maya Angelou