Anne > Anne's Quotes

“He who knows he has enough, is rich”
― Lao Tzu

“Its the same for every career and life decision. You just have to keep driving down the road. It's going to bend and curve, and you're going to speed up and slow down, but the road keeps going.”
― Ellen DeGeneres, Seriously... I'm Kidding

“I was a curious boy, but the schools were not concerned in curiosity. They were concerned in compliance... 60% of all black men who drop out of school end up in jail. This should disgrace our country, but it does not.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“I read about Queen Nzinga who ruled in Central Africa in the 16th century resisting the Portuguese. I read about her negotiating with the Dutch. When the Dutch Ambassador tried to humiliate her by refusing her a seat Nzinga had shown her power by ordering one of her advisers to all fours to make a human chair of her body. That was the kind of power I saw. and the story of our own royalty became for me a weapon.”
― Ta-Nehisi Coates, Between the World and Me

“Many people go looking for wool and come back shorn.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote

“Alcoholic drinks do not agree with me. A single glass of wine or beer a day is amply sufficient to turn life into a valley of tears for me.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“I got a mother who wasn't having it. She wasn't having a minute of my drama, which is probably the luckiest thing that ever happened to me... she was not about to raise a little candy ass. Not on her watch.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“All the good ideas seem daunting at first.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“Women are the one's holding themselves back from participating in the first place - holding back their ideas, holding back their contributions, holding back their leadership and their talents. Too many women still believe that they're not allowed to put themselves forward at all until both they and their work are perfect and beyond criticism. Meanwhile putting forth work that is far from perfect rarely stops men from participating in the global cultural conversation... I like that feature in men - their absurd over-confidence, the way that they will casually decide "well I'm 41% qualified for this task, so give *me* the job..." sometimes, strangely enough, it works. A man who seems not ready for the task, not good enough for the task, somehow grows immediately into his potential through the wild leap of faith itself. I only wish women would also risk these same kinds of wild leaps, but I've watched too many women do the opposite. I've watched far too many brilliant and gifted female creators say "I am 99.8% qualified for this task, but until I master that last smidgen of ability, I will hold myself back, just to be on the safe side. Now, I cannot imagine where women ever got the idea that they must be perfect in order to be loved or successful. Hahaha! Just kidding! I can totally imagine. We've got it from every single message society has ever sent us! Thanks, all of human history!”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“You don't need to conduct autopsies on your disasters.”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

“If you're gonna run away from home, take a dog along.”
― William Least Heat-Moon, Blue Highways

“Nothing grieves more deeply or pathetically than one-half of a great love that wasn't meant to be.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“Her eyes were the color of the sea if the sea were perfect.”
― Gregory David Roberts, Shantaram

“We find our own meaning through the stories we tell ourselves.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“In a way I was raised with three parents, my older sister always wanting to mother me
instead of sister me.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“I wish I could go back in time to my life before The News. Before my eyes would seek the arms on the clock like a tic just to calculate: A few minutes ago, my life was different. An hour ago, I didn’t know. Twenty-four hours ago, I had no idea my life was about to change forever. Friday, one week later, I have a moment of normality when I first wake up. Just a moment. A single moment before remembering. At this time a week ago, I still didn’t know. For the rest of my life, I will never not know.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“I get used to a new person like a gift I didn't ask for. I don't know what I'm going to do
with them at first. Sometimes I throw them out. Sometimes they get tucked away on the closet shelf, forgotten. But sometimes, I question how I ever lived without them.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“And the truth is I am not strong enough to tread water in the salty abyss as I watch the ship sail away. I am weak-hearted. I can't hold my breath for long. I don't know how to stay afloat while searching for shallower waters. I only know how to hope that my drowning will be quick.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“The drought came with the volcano. Street lamps frowned through ash-made dark. Homes turned into hills with chimneys peeking out the summits. We hummed as we trudged through the wreckage, until our hums
turned into songs. We didn’t know what else to do. Tears wouldn’t water the grass. Cries wouldn’t call the birds home.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“I am a ghost town, my body still exists among the remnants and relics, but no one lives here anymore. The locals moved out with the post office. The shelves at the corner store stand as tombstones marking the prices of items
that once waited for hands to toss them in their basket. Spiders and the remains of their kills fill the fluorescent lights. The crows don’t even stop on the wires when they fly over.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“My sadness is a thousand-foot well; gratitude is a rope keeping me from drowning.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“I never thought I would feel lucky to have pain dripping from my pores, pain stuck to the pads of my fingers, to the bottoms of my feet, to have pain become the core of my identity in an instant, but here I am.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“I am grateful for the doom. I'd rather share my time with the dread than have no time at all.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“Two great pains mark my grief trail like cairns:
knowing that it was going to happen, and it happening. But unlike cairns, I can never navigate back the way I came.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“I feel disconnected from the people who I know have not experienced the exposed nerves of a close loved one yanked by pliers from one's jaws. I am different from them now. They can’t know the festering wound staining my teeth red, can't know the taste of salt and iron in everything I eat.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“I am not a whole, only disjointed pieces held together the way two ventricles taped to an aorta won’t beat.”
― Anne Marie Wells, Survived By: A Memoir in Verse + Other Poems

“Poets are word fetishists.”
― Craig Morgan Teicher, We Begin in Gladness: How Poets Progress

“Most poets, in addition to being word fetishists, finally dedicate themselves to poetry -- or find themselves helplessly in its thrall -- in order to answer for something deeper and perhaps darker than their passion for words.”
― Craig Morgan Teicher, We Begin in Gladness: How Poets Progress

“A poet casts words into the ether to hear what words come back.”
― Craig Morgan Teicher, We Begin in Gladness: How Poets Progress

“Poets begin, ideally, in gladness, but often they begin in darker states -- poetry tends to arise as a way forward for those who have something to say that is painful and unutterable by other, more practical, more direct means.”
― Craig Morgan Teicher, We Begin in Gladness: How Poets Progress