"Close the door. Write with no one looking over your shoulder. Don't try to figure out what other people want to hear from you; figure out what you have to say. It's the one and only thing you have to offer."
— Barbara Kingsolver

"Morning always comes."
— Barbara Kingsolver

"The very least you can do in your life is figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance, but live right in it, under its roof."
— Barbara Kingsolver (Animal Dreams)

"It's what you do that makes your soul."
— Barbara Kingsolver

"A mother's body remembers her babies..."
— Barbara Kingsolver

"There is a fullness of time for things. You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet. When to let things take their course."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"We walked along the river with the words streaming behind us like ribbons in the night."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"You have to know when to prod and when to be quiet, when to let things take their course."
— Sue Monk Kidd (The Secret Life of Bees)

"How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live."
— Henry David Thoreau

"Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined."
— Henry David Thoreau

"Read the best books first, or you may not have a chance to read them at all."
— Henry David Thoreau (A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers)

"Our truest life is when we are in dreams awake."
— Henry David Thoreau

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms."
— Henry David Thoreau (Walden: Or, Life in the Woods)

"I am not afraid of storms, for I am learning how to sail my ship."
— Louisa May Alcott (Little Women)

"Far away there in the sunshine are my highest aspirations. I may not reach them, but I can look up and see their beauty, believe in them, and try to follow where they lead."
— Louisa May Alcott

"Stay is a charming word in a friend's vocabulary."
— Louisa May Alcott

"I want to do something splendid…
Something heroic or wonderful that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead…
I think I shall write books."
— Louisa May Alcott

"What really knocks me out is a book that, when you're all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn't happen much, though."
— J.D. Salinger (The Catcher in the Rye)

"Be grateful for what you have now. As you begin to think about all the things in your life you are grateful for, you will be amazed at the never ending thoughts that come back to you of more things to be grateful for. You have to make a start, and then the law of attraction will receive those grateful thoughts and give you more just like them."
— Rhonda Byrne (The Secret)

"Love is like breathing, you take it in and let it out."
— Wally Lamb (She's Come Undone)

"Stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone ought to be."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You fight for it, strive for it, insist upon it, and sometimes even travel around the world looking for it. You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it. You must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection."
— Anonymous (The Bhagavad Gita)

"Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend."
— Elizabeth Gilbert

"Look for God. Look for God like a man with his head on fire looks for water."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"As smoking is to the lungs, so is resentment to the soul; even one puff is bad for you."
— Elizabeth Gilbert

"There’s a crack (or cracks) in everyone…that’s how the light of God gets in."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"In the end, though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives. In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you, forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"Dear me, how I love a library."
— Elizabeth Gilbert

"I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on the water."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight."
— Elizabeth Gilbert

"I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long, I will stay with you. There’s nothing you can ever do to lose my love. I will protect you until you die, and after your death I will still protect you. I am stronger than Depression and I am braver than Loneliness and nothing will ever exhaust me."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"There is a reason they call God a presence - because God is right here, right now. In the present is the only place to find Him, and now is the only time."
— Elizabeth Gilbert (Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India and Indonesia)

"Sometimes when you pick up your child you can feel the map of your own bones beneath your hands, or smell the scent of your skin in the nape of his neck. This is the most extraordinary thing about motherhood - finding a piece of yourself separate and apart that all the same you could not live without."
— Jodi Picoult (Perfect Match)

"Motherhood is near to divinity. It is the highest, holiest service to be assumed by mankind."
— Howard W. Hunter

"Sometimes the strength of motherhood is greater than natural laws."
— Barbara Kingsolver

"The mother...swinging the children by pulling on a length of string, while at the same time she kept and eye on them with that protective watchfulness, half animal, half angelic, which is the quality of motherhood. "
— Victor Hugo

"So how on earth can I bring a child into the world, knowing that such sorrow lies ahead, that it is such a large part of what it means to be human?
I'm not sure. That's my answer: I'm not sure."
— Anne Lamott (Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year)

"A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
enough money within her control to move out
and rent a place of her own even if she never wants
to or needs to...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
something perfect to wear if the employer or date of her
dreams wants to see her in an hour...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ...
a youth she's content to leave behind....
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a past juicy enough that she's looking forward to
retelling it in her old age....
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE .....
a set of screwdrivers, a cordless drill, and a black
lace bra...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
one friend who always makes her laugh... and one who
lets her cry...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a good piece of furniture not previously owned by anyone
else in her family...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
eight matching plates, wine glasses with stems, and a
recipe for a meal that will make her guests feel honored...
A WOMAN SHOULD HAVE ....
a feeling of control over her destiny...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to fall in love without losing herself..
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
HOW TO QUIT A JOB,
BREAK UP WITH A LOVER,
AND CONFRONT A FRIEND WITHOUT RUINING THE FRIENDSHIP...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
when to try harder... and WHEN TO WALK AWAY...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that she can't change the length of her calves,
the width of her hips, or the nature of her parents..
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
that her childhood may not have been perfect...but it's over...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she would and wouldn't do for love or more...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
how to live alone... even if she doesn't like it...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
whom she can trust,
whom she can't,
and why she shouldn't
take it personally...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
where to go...
be it to her best friend's kitchen table...
or a charming inn in the woods...
when her soul needs soothing...
EVERY WOMAN SHOULD KNOW...
what she can and can't accomplish in a day...
a month...and a year..."
— Pamela Redmond Satran

"Strangers are just family you have yet to come to know."
— Mitch Albom

"I had rather be shut up in a very modest cottage, with my books, my family, and a few old friends, dining on simple bacon, and letting the world roll on as it liked, than to occupy the most splendid post which any human power can give.""
— Thomas Jefferson

"Hey, girls, you're beautiful. Don't look at those stupid magazines with sticklike models. Eat healthy and exercise. That's all. Don't let anyone tell you you're not good enough. You're good enough, you are too good. Love your family with all your heart and listen to it. You are gorgeous, whether you're a size 4 or 14. It doesn't matter what you look like on the outside, as long as you're a good person, as long as you respect others. I know it's been told hundreds of times before, but it's true. Hey, girls, you are beautiful."
— Gerard Way

"Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world."
— Napoleon Bonaparte

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
— C.S. Lewis

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."
— C.S. Lewis

"We read to know that we are not alone."
— C.S. Lewis

"(The Christian) does not think God will love us because we are good, but that God will make us good because He loves us."
— C.S. Lewis

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."
— C.S. Lewis

"The homemaker has the ultimate career. All other careers exist for one purpose only - and that is to support the ultimate career. "
— C.S. Lewis

"There are only two kinds of people in the end: those who say to God, "Thy will be done," and those to whom God says, in the end, "Thy will be done." All that are in Hell, choose it. Without that self-choice there could be no Hell. No soul that seriously and constantly desires joy will ever miss it. Those who seek find. Those who knock it is opened. "
— C.S. Lewis (The Great Divorce)