Ain't that the Truth

“And now we’re supposed to go back to our normal lives. That’s what people do. They have these amazing experiences with another person, and then they just go home and clean the bathroom or whatever.”

- When It Happens (Susane Colasanti)

Left Unsaid

“A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say.”

- Italo Calvino, The Uses of Literature 

Fear Not

"I don’t want to look back in five years time and think, ‘We could have been magnificent, but I was afraid.’ In 5 years I want to tell of how fear tried to cheat me out of the best thing in life, and I didn’t let it."

Risk

“You have this one life. How do you wanna spend it? Apologizing? Regretting? Questioning? Hating yourself? Dieting? Running after people who don’t see you? Be brave. Believe in yourself. Do what feels good. Take risks. You have this one life. Make yourself proud.”

-?

Radical

“Make a radical change in your lifestyle and begin to boldly do things which you may previously never have thought of doing, or been too hesitant to attempt. So many people live within unhappy circumstances and yet will not take the initiative to change their situation because they are conditioned to a life of security, conformity, and conservation, all of which may appear to give one peace of mind, but in reality nothing is more damaging to the adventurous spirit within a man than a secure future. The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun. If you want to get more out of life, you must lose your inclination for monotonous security and adopt a helter-skelter style of life that will at first appear to you to be crazy. But once you become accustomed to such a life you will see its full meaning and its incredible beauty.”

-

Jon Krakauer

Just Eat the Piece of Cake

❝ Cakes have gotten a bad rap. People equate virtue with turning down dessert. There is always one person at the table who holds up her hand when I serve the cake. No, really, I couldn’t she says, and then gives her flat stomach a conspiratorial little pat. Everyone who is pressing a fork into that first tender layer looks at the person who declined the plate, and they all think, That person is better than I am. That person has discipline. But that isn’t a person with discipline; that is a person who has completely lost touch with joy. A slice of cake never made anybody fat. You don’t eat the whole cake. You don’t eat a cake every day of your life. You take the cake when it is offered because the cake is delicious. You have a slice of cake and what it reminds you of is someplace that’s safe, uncomplicated, without stress. A cake is a party, a birthday, a wedding. A cake is what’s served on the happiest days of your life. This is a story of how my life was saved by cake, so, of course, if sides are to be taken, I will always take the side of cake. ❞

JEANNE RAY 

Risk and Eyelashes

Jay McInerney, “Invisible Fences”

I love this kind of Grace

❝ I meet Christians who are super-glossy, picture-perfect, law-abiding people, but they are absolutely miserable and difficult to be near. Their every movement is dictated by a strict rigid ruleset that is motivated by a desperate fear. If your efforts are not driven by grace — that God absolutely loves you no matter what — then you will punish yourself towards an invisible standard that looks like success but feels like slavery. Such a standard might work for a little while to conform your behavior, but it will never become a part of you: it’s just an apparatus that imprisons you. Only grace can truly be internalized to melt your heart, and though it can take longer, a truly tenderized heart follows God with all joy and perseverance. This is motivation by grace and grace alone. ❞

J.S. 

Heart Broken

❝ I imagine my heart was being broken to make it bigger in order to embrace something I couldn’t have other wise. ❞

CATHE LAURIE 

Colorology

“It’s like this … All your life you’re yellow. Then one day you brush up against something blue, the barest touch, and voila, the rest of your life you’re green.”

- Tess Callahan  

Love love love

“It isn’t possible to love and part. You will wish that it was. You can transmute love, ignore it, muddle it, but you can never pull it out of you. I know by experience that the poets are right: love is eternal.”

- E.M. Forster, A Room with a View (viaexoticwild)

On Waiting

“I do not know why there is this difference, but I am sure that God keeps no one waiting unless He sees that it is good for him to wait. When you do enter your room, you will find that the long wait has done you some kind of good which you would not have had otherwise. But you must regard it as waiting, not as camping. You must keep on praying for light: and of course, even in the hall, you must begin trying to obey the rules which are common to the whole house. And above all you must be asking which door is the true one; not which pleases you best by its paint and paneling.”

- c.s lewis

To Haters

“people who love their bodies, their lives, their relationships, don’t hate on others’. if you know love and happiness, that’s what you put out in the world.”

- meghantonjes

Women Warrior

❝ A warrior feeds her body well. She trains it, works on it. Where she lacks knowledge, she studies. But above all, she must believe in her strength of will and purpose and heart and soul. ❞

DAVID GEMMEL  

The Perspective of Stars

❝ If people sat outside and looked at the stars each night, I bet they’d live a lot differently. When you look into infinity, you realize there are more important things than what people do all day. ❞

CALVIN AND HOBBES

Power of Touch

"There’s power in the touch of another person’s hand. We acknowledge it in little ways, all the time. There’s a reason human beings shake hands, hold hands, slap hands, bump hands.

“It comes from our very earliest memories, when we all come into the world blinded by light and color, deafened by riotous sound, flailing in a suddenly cavernous space without any way of orienting ourselves, shuddering with cold, emptied with hunger, and justifiably frightened and confused. And what changes that first horror, that original state of terror?

“The touch of another person’s hands.

“Hands that wrap us in warmth, that hold us close. Hands that guide us to shelter, to comfort, to food. Hands that hold and touch and reassure us through our very first crisis, and guide us into our very first shelter from pain. The first thing we ever learn is that the touch of someone else’s hand can ease pain and make things better.

“That’s power. That’s power so fundamental that most people never even realize it exists.” 

-Jim Butcher, Skin Game

Good Things Coming

"I believe in the good things coming...energy cannot be lost. Nothing is ever lost; it's simply transformed. Love has shifted and changed and transformed from one shape to another but in the end it's all the same because we are all here and we are not. I believe in the good things coming. I believe we can make it through anything. I believe in love. I believe in loss. I believe that life brings us thunderstorms but also sunshine and this is how we break and mend and learn and plant seeds for new life that needs rain and sun to grow. I believe in the good things coming. For me. For you. For all of us."

-Rachel Brathen Yoga Girl

Molecules

"Moments are the molecules that make up eternity."

-Neal A. Maxwell

Weaver

"God is always weaving. Every minute of everyday. He never stops. Even when we can't hear the rhythm of the loom, God is weaving the threads that will reveal a beautiful tapestry."

@jennsprinkle

The Useless Days

"The useless days will add up to something. The...waitressing jobs. The hours writing in your journal. The long meandering walk. The hours reading poetry and story collections and novels and dead people's diaries and wondering about...God and whether you should shave under our arms or not. These things are your becoming."

-Cheryl Strayed

Glass

"For now we see through a glass, darkly;  but then face to face:  now I know in part;  but then shall I know even as also I am known."

-1 Corinthians 13:12....articulated and explained HERE