Mo > Mo's Quotes

“It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.”
― Chuck Palahniuk, Diary

“We change our behavior when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. Consequences give us the pain that motivates us to change.”
― Dr. Henry Cloud & Dr. John Townsend

“play has become too domesticated and regimented while playgrounds themselves have become more and more barren. May today are devoid of vegetation with which to form nests, shelters, wands, dolls, or other playthings...These concerns are best explored in a heterogeneous habitat, where several secret niches are harbored, the kinds that can no longer be found on prefabricated metal and plastic jungle gym.”
― Gary Paul Nabhan, The Geography of Childhood: Why Children Need Wild Places

“The most potent muse of all is our own inner child”
― Stephen Nachmanovitch

“For those who would make art, the basic proposition is crystal clear: finding the work you are meant to do is the central challenge of artmaking — and making that work is the central challenge of life.”
― Ted Orland, The View From The Studio Door - How Artists Find Their Way In An Uncertain World

“But I don’t want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
"Oh, you can’t help that," said the Cat: "we’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad."
"How do you know I’m mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn’t have come here.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"
"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."
"I don't much care where –"
"Then it doesn't matter which way you go.”
― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

“We should write because it is human nature to write. Writing claims our world. It makes it directly and specifically our own. We should write because humans are spiritual beings and writing is a powerful form of prayer and meditation, connecting us both to our own insights and to a higher and deeper level of inner guidance.

We should write because writing brings clarity and passion to the act of living. Writing is sensual, experiential, grounding. We should write because writing is good for the soul. We should write because writing yields us a body of work, a felt path through the world we live in.

We should write, above all, because we are writers, whether we call ourselves that or not.”
― Julia Cameron, The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation Into the Writing Life

“Creativity requires faith. Faith requires that we relinquish control.”
― Julia Cameron

“For me, the person I was becoming when we left was erased, and another one was created.”
― Esmeralda Santiago, When I Was Puerto Rican

“.....and I smile
and know
why people write music and paint and dance, lifted as if they can fly,
because this ache
crashing inside
needs to be free.
sometimes, love
becomes a melody
others hum for years.”
― Pat Mora, Dizzy in Your Eyes: Poems about Love

“The Church says: the body is a sin.
Science says: the body is a machine.
Advertising says: The body is a business.
The Body says: I am a fiesta.”
― Eduardo Galeano, Walking Words

“Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. Don't you think? It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be the artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see.”
― Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

“Reading fiction not only develops our imagination and creativity, it gives us the skills to be alone. It gives us the ability to feel empathy for people we've never met, living lives we couldn't possibly experience for ourselves, because the book puts us inside the character's skin.
”
― Ann Patchett

“Love was action. It came to you. It was not a choice.”
― Ann Patchett, Bel Canto

“True knowledge is not attained by thinking. It is what you are; it is what you become.”
― Sri Aurobindo & The Mother

“But many of us seek community solely to escape the fear of being alone. Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as a means of escape.”
― Bell Hooks, All About Love: New Visions

“I believe the best way to begin reconnecting humanity's heart, mind, and soul to nature is for us to share our individual stories.”
― J. Drew Lanham, The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man's Love Affair with Nature

“The generation that destroys the environment is not the generation that pays the price. That is the problem.”
― Wangari Maathai

“No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them. Nobody is going to teach you your true history, teach you your true heroes, if they know that that knowledge will help set you free.”
― Assata Shakur

“I think that history is the story of the past, using all the available facts, and that nostalgia is a fantasy about the past using no facts, and somewhere in between is memory, which is kind of this blend of history and a little bit of emotion…I mean, history is kind of about what you need to know…but nostalgia is what you want to hear.”
― Clint Smith, How the Word Is Passed: A Reckoning with the History of Slavery Across America

“While history is what happened, it is also, just as important, how we think about what happened and what we unearth and choose to remember about what happened”
― Nikole Hannah-Jones, The 1619 Project: A New American Origin Story

“It’s easy to look at the contours of a forest and feel a bone deep love for nature. It’s less easy to remember that the contours of your own body represent the exact same nature. The pathways of your mind. Your dreams, dark and strange as sprouts curling beneath a flat rock. Your regret, bitter as the citrus rot of old cut grass. It’s the same as the nature you make time to love. That you practice loving. The forest. The meadow. The sweeping arm of a galaxy. You are as natural as any postcard landscape and deserve the same love.”
― Jarod K. Anderson, Field Guide to the Haunted Forest

“And what about a person's life? How do you make a map of that? The borders people draw between themselves. The scars left along the ground of one's heart.”
― Charmaine Wilkerson, Black Cake

“It is self-indulgent to give into Despair--it's easy. Hope, now that takes strength--it takes practice and determination to believe in a better outcome. Don't you dare give into dread. Don't you dare give up!”
― Aminder Dhaliwal, A Witch's Guide to Burning

“It's a reminder that there's more to life than the things that need to be done. There's also things that want to be done.”
― Aminder Dhaliwal, A Witch's Guide to Burning

“There’s something insupportable about being pissed with the one person on this planet that sends your adrenaline flowing to remind you that you’re alive. It’s almost like we’re mad because we’ve been shocked out of our usual comatose state of being by feeling something for someone, for ourselves, for just a moment.”
― Ana Castillo, Loverboys: Stories