"I wanted a perfect ending. Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity."
— Gilda Radner

"The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers. "
— Erich Fromm

"I think that all artists, regardless of degree of talent, are a painful, paradoxical combination of certainty and uncertainty, of arrogance and humility, constantly in need of reassurance, and yet with a stubborn streak of faith in their own validity no matter what."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"To teach how to live with uncertainty, yet without being paralyzed by hesitation, is perhaps the chief thing that philosophy can do."
— Bertrand Russell

"In these times I don't, in a manner of speaking, know what I want; perhaps I don't want what I know and want what I don't know."
— Marsilio Ficino (Letters of Marsilio Ficino: Volume 3)

"in the cold you wrap me. in my uncertainty you listen. in all my joys you celebrate. at every turn you meet me with competence and grace. what a fine dance we have together."
— Mary Anne Radmacher

"I will be the answer at the end of the line. I will be there for you. Why take the time? In the burning of uncertainty, I will be your solid ground. I, I will hold the balance if you can't look down. If it takes my whole life, I won't break. I won't bend. It will all be worth it, worth it in the end because I can only tell you what I know, that I need you in my life. When the stars have all gone out you'll still be burning so bright."
— Sarah McLachlan

".... have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and... try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language.... Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
— Rainer Maria Rilke (Letters to a Young Poet)

"Maturity is the capacity to endure uncertainty."
— John Huston Finley

"When all is said and done, the weather and love are the two elements about which one can never be sure."
— Alice Hoffman

"Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind."
— Dr. Seuss

"Dance like no one is watching. Sing like no one is listening. Love like you've never been hurt and live like it's heaven on Earth."
— Mark Twain

"Don't cry because it's over, smile because it happened."
— Dr. Seuss

"Do one thing everyday that scares you."
— Eleanor Roosevelt

"I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens."
— Woody Allen

"Do not fear to be eccentric in opinion, for every opinion now accepted was once eccentric."
— Bertrand Russell

"There are two basic motivating forces: fear and love. When we are afraid, we pull back from life. When we are in love, we open to all that life has to offer with passion, excitement, and acceptance. We need to learn to love ourselves first, in all our glory and our imperfections. If we cannot love ourselves, we cannot fully open to our ability to love others or our potential to create. Evolution and all hopes for a better world rest in the fearlessness and open-hearted vision of people who embrace life."
— John Lennon

"Cowards die many times before their deaths;
The valiant never taste of death but once.
Of all the wonders that I yet have heard,
It seems to me most strange that men should fear;
Seeing that death, a necessary end,
Will come when it will come."
— William Shakespeare (Julius Caesar)

"Still I Rise


You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may trod me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?
Why are you beset with gloom?
'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells
Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,
With the certainty of tides,
Just like hopes springing high,
Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?
Bowed head and lowered eyes?
Shoulders falling down like teardrops.
Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?
Don't you take it awful hard
'Cause I laugh like I've got gold mines
Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame
I rise
Up from a past that's rooted in pain
I rise
I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,
Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.
Leaving behind nights of terror and fear
I rise
Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear
I rise
Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,
I am the dream and the hope of the slave.
I rise
I rise
I rise."
— Maya Angelou

"Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.""
— Jim Morrison

"The only real stumbling block is fear of failure. In cooking you've got to have a what-the-hell attitude."
— Julia Child

"When love beckons to you follow him, Though his ways are hard and steep. And when his wings enfold you yield to him, Though the sword hidden among his pinions may wound you. And when he speaks to you believe in him, Though his voice may shatter your dreams as the north wind lays waste the garden. For even as love crowns you so shall he crucify you. Even as he is for your growth so is he for your pruning. Even as he ascends to your height and caresses your tenderest branches that quiver in the sun, So shall he descend to your roots and shake them in their clinging to the earth......

But if in your fear you would seek only love's peace and love's pleasure, Then it is better for you that you cover your nakedness and pass out of love's threshing-floor, Into the seasonless world where you shall laugh, but not all of your laughter, and weep, but not all of your tears. Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself.

Love possesses not nor would it be possessed; For love is sufficient unto love. And think not you can direct the course of love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course. Love has no other desire but to fulfil itself."

But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires: To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night. To know the pain of too much tenderness. To be wounded by your own understanding of love; And to bleed willingly and joyfully."
— Kahlil Gibrán (The Prophet)

"I am not a glutton - I am an explorer of food"
— Erma Bombeck

"The only time to eat diet food is while you're waiting for the steak to cook."
— Julia Child

"Don't wreck a sublime chocolate experience by feeling guilty.
Chocolate isn't like premarital sex. It will not make you pregnant.
And it always feels good."
— Lora Brody

"There is no love sincerer than the love of food."
— George Bernard Shaw (Man and Superman)

"Ice-cream is exquisite.
What a pity it isn't illegal."
— Voltaire

"You can't just eat good food. You've got to talk about it too. And you've got to talk about it to somebody who understands that kind of food."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Jailbird)

"Always serve too much hot fudge sauce on hot fudge sundaes.
It makes people overjoyed, and puts them in your debt."
— Judith Olney

"Great restaurants are, of course, nothing but mouth-brothels. There is no point in going to them if one intends to keep one's belt buckled."
— Frederic Raphael

"Vegetarians, and their Hezbollah-like splinter-faction, the vegans, are a persistent irritant to any chef worth a damn.

To me, life without veal stock, pork fat, sausage, organ meat, demi-glace, or even stinky cheese is a life not worth living.

Vegetarians are the enemy of everything good and decent in the human spirit, an affront to all I stand for, the pure enjoyment of food. The body, these waterheads imagine, is a temple that should not be polluted by animal protein. It's healthier, they insist, though every vegetarian waiter I've worked with is brought down by any rumor of a cold.

Oh, I'll accomodate them, I'll rummage around for something to feed them, for a 'vegetarian plate', if called on to do so. Fourteen dollars for a few slices of grilled eggplant and zucchini suits my food cost fine."
— Anthony Bourdain

"My favorite animal is steak."
— Fran Lebowitz

"Health food makes me sick."
— Calvin Trillin

"Sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly.
"
— M. F. K. Fisher

"Don't let love interfere with your appetite.
It never does with mine."
— Anthony Trollope

"Food, like a loving touch or a glimpse of divine power,
has that ability to comfort."
— Norman Kolpas

"That's something I've noticed about food: whenever there's a crisis if you can get people to eating normally things get better."
— Madeleine L'Engle

"Let food be thy medicine and medicine be thy food"
— Hippocrates

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect."
— Mark Twain

"In a good bookroom you feel in some mysterious way that you are absorbing the wisdom contained in all the books through your skin, without even opening them."
— Mark Twain

"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it."
— Aristotle (Metaphysics)

"The only true wisdom is in knowing you know nothing."
— Socrates

"Let no man pull you low enough to hate him."
— Martin Luther King Jr.

"The unexamined life is not worth living."
— Socrates

"By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest."
— Confucius

"Experience is merely the name men gave to their mistakes."
— Oscar Wilde (The Picture of Dorian Gray)

"Turn your wounds into wisdom."
— Oprah Winfrey

"When you know better you do better."
— Oprah Winfrey

"Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly."
— Langston Hughes

"He who stands for nothing will fall for anything."
— Alexander Hamilton