Defeats

"...We may encounter many defeats, but we must not be defeated. That sounds goody two-shoes, I know, but I believe that a diamond is the result of extreme pressure and time. Less time is crystal. Less than that is coal. Less than that is fossilized leaves. Less than that is just plain dirt. In all my work, in the movies I write, the lyrics, the poetry, the prose, the essays, I am saying that we may encounter many defeats- maybe it's imperative that we encounter the defeats- but we are much stronger than we appear to be and maybe much better than we allow ourselves to be."

-Maya Angelou

Perspective

"My barn having burned down
I can now see the moon."

-Mizuta Masahide

Fearless

“Beware; for I am fearless, and therefore powerful.”

- Mary Shelley, Frankenstein 

Remember and Redemption

"Redemption comes when you remember who you are."

-in reference to almost every fairy tale originally told/written


-Maria Tatar

Redemption

"And that, I believe, is what true redemption is, Amir jan, when guilt leads to good."

-Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner ch. 23

Movement

"Nothing is more revealing than movement."

- Martha Graham

Something great

“Something great is about to happen to me: I’m about to love somebody very much.””

- Jack Kerouac, from Windblown 

That's when you jump

“When it feels scary to jump, that’s exactly when you jump. Otherwise you end up staying the same place your whole life. And that I can’t do.”

- A Most Violent Year, J.C. Chandor 

Wild things

“I never saw a wild thing 

sorry for itself.”

- D.H. Lawrence, “Self-Pity”  

Lilacs stirring dull roots

“April is the cruelest month, breeding

lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
memory and desire, stirring
dull roots with spring rain.”

- T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland  

For a growing soul

“Cheers for spring; for life; for a growing soul.”

- Sylvia Plath - from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath 

Sound of the hello

“The search for your soulmate ends with the sound of a hello, and a familiar feeling like you’ve said hello once before.”

- soulmates part 1 // Jenn Satsune 

Scary Close

“I no longer believe love works like a fairy tale but like farming. Most of it is just getting up early and tilling the soil and then praying for rain. But if we do the work, we might just wake up one day to find an endless field of crops rolling into the horizon. In my opinion, that’s even better than a miracle.”

- Don Miller, Scary Close

Seedling

“Some periods of our growth are so confusing that we don’t even recognize that growth is happening. We may feel hostile or angry or weepy and hysterical, or we may feel depressed. It would never occur to us, unless we stumbled on a book or a person who explained to us, that we were in fact in the process of change, of actually becoming larger, spiritually, than we were before. Whenever we grow, we tend to feel it, as a young seed must feel the weight and inertia of the earth as it seeks to break out of its shell on its way to becoming a plant. Often the feeling is anything but pleasant. But what is most unpleasant is the not knowing what is happening. Those long periods when something inside ourselves seems to be waiting, holding its breath, unsure about what the next step should be, eventually become the periods we wait for, for it is in those periods that we realize that we are being prepared for the next phase of our life and that, in all probability, a new level of the personality is about to be revealed.”

- Alice Walker: living by the word

Beauty must be truth

"What the imagination seizes as beauty must be truth."

-John Keats

Always Process

"...my satisfaction in creative work has nothing to do with what I make and everything to do with the process of making. Whether I leave with a piece of garbage or something I'm really proud of, I love to work..."

-Sam Beam of Iron & Wine

Succeess

"Your level of success will seldom exceed your level of personal development because success is something you attract by the person you become."

-Jim Rohn
referred to here

Just take the picture and be present

"Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still."

-Dorothea Lange

Building the universe

"On a summer morning I sat down on a hillside to think about God - - a worthy pastime. Near me, I saw a single cricket; it was moving the grains of the hillside this way and that way. How great was its energy, how humble its effort. Let us hope it will always be like this, each of us going on in our inexplicable ways building the universe."

-Mary Oliver

Like a river

like
a river
flows so
surely to
the sea darling
so it goes some
things are
meant to
be

-unknown

The world is heavy, but your bones

the world is heavy
but your bones
(just a cubic inch)
can hold 19,000 lbs

once for once
they are stronger
than steel

atom for atom
you are more precious
than diamond

and stars have died
so that you may live

you need to remember
these things when you
say that you are weak
and worthless

-unknown

Plan B

"Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth."

-Mike Tyson

Loved properly

"You were the fist thing I ever loved properly and without hesitation."

-Amy Turn Sharp

Greatest love story

"Easter is one of the greatest love stories ever told."

- Karey Mackin

The horizon leans forward

"The horizon leans forward, offering you space to place new steps of change."

-Maya Angelou

April is for poets

"The writing of a poem is like a child throwing stones into a mine shaft.

You compose first, then you listen for the reverberation."

-James Fenton