"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive."
— James Baldwin

"All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
is Change.

God
is Change.

EARTHSEED:THE BOOKS OF LIVING"
— Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Sower)

"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."
— Anaïs Nin

"Good things happen to those who hustle."
— Chuck Noll

"We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are."
— Anaïs Nin

"You cannot find peace by avoiding life."
— Virginia Woolf

"Writing is like sex. First you do it for love, then you do it for your friends, and then you do it for money."
— Virginia Woolf

"I don't believe in aging. I believe in forever altering one's aspect to the sun. "
— Virginia Woolf

"All extremes of feeling are allied with madness."
— Virginia Woolf (Orlando)

"I love America more than any other country in the world and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually. "
— James Baldwin

"Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced."
— James Baldwin

"Most of us are about as eager to be changed as we were to be born, and go through our changes in a similar state of shock. "
— James Baldwin

"To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a rage almost all the time. "
— James Baldwin

"We do know that no one gets wise enough to understand the heart of another, though it is the task of our life to try."
— Louise Erdrich (The Bingo Palace)

"Never do anything yourself that others can do for you."
— Agatha Christie

"Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You."
— Dr. Seuss (Happy Birthday to You!)

"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you'll go."
— Dr. Seuss

"If women want rights more than they got, why don't they just take them, and not be talking about it."
— Sojourner Truth

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them."
— Mark Twain

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

"The first time someone shows you who they are, believe them."
— Maya Angelou

"I am a Woman
Phenomenally.
Phenomenal Woman,
that's me."
— Maya Angelou

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be some kind of library."
— Jorge Luis Borges

"You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened."
— Jorge Luis Borges

"An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind.
"
— Kahlil Gibran

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."
— Elie Wiesel

"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation."
— Oscar Wilde

""Passion. It lies in all of us. Sleeping ... waiting ... and though unwanted, unbidden, it will stir ... open its jaws and howl. It speaks to us ... guides us. Passion rules us all. And we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love ... the clarity of hatred ... the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion, maybe we'd know some kind of peace. But we would be hollow. Empty rooms, shuttered and dank. Without passion, we'd be truly dead." "
— Joss Whedon (Buffy the Vampire Slayer)

"By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing.
And he vows his passion is,
Infinite, undying.
Lady make note of this --
One of you is lying."
— Dorothy Parker

"What Reason weaves, by Passion is undone."
— Alexander Poe

"Serving one's own passions is the greatest slavery."
— Thomas Fuller

"Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants."
— Michael Pollan (In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto)

"Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past."
— Anne Lamott

"When you don't cover up the world with words and labels, a sense of the miraculous returns to your life that was lost a long time ago when humanity, instead of using thought, became possessed by thought."
— Eckhart Tolle (A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose)

"Acknowledging the good that you already have in your life is the foundation for all abundance."
— Eckhart Tolle (A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose)

"I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where. I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride; so I love you because I know no other way."
— Pablo Neruda (100 Love Sonnets/Cien Sonetos De Amor)

"It was at that age
that poetry came in search of me"
— Pablo Neruda (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair: Dual Language Edition)

"Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps."
— Pablo Neruda

"Love is so short, forgetting is so long."
— Pablo Neruda (Love: Ten Poems By Pablo Neruda)

"I can write the saddest poem of all tonight. I loved her, and sometimes she loved me too."
— Pablo Neruda

"I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair.
Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.
Bread does not nourish me, dawn disrupts me, all day
I hunt for the liquid measure of your steps.

I hunger for your sleek laugh,
your hands the color of a savage harvest,
hunger for the pale stones of your fingernails,
I want to eat your skin like a whole almond.

I want to eat the sunbeam flaring in your lovely body,
the sovereign nose of your arrogant face,
I want to eat the fleeting shade of your lashes,

and I pace around hungry, sniffing the twilight,
hunting for you, for your hot heart,
Like a puma in the barrens of Quitratue."
— Pablo Neruda