Bittersweet

“Someday, somewhere — anywhere, unfailingly, you’ll find yourself, and that, and only that, can be the happiest or bitterest hour of your life.”

- Pablo Neruda

These are the Ways

From Chelsea.

"I told the cute boy at the check out who never smiles back, that I had spent most of the day laying on the floor painting a brown jewelry box pink and writing myself Valentine's Cards with crayons.... he cracked a smile and saidhe didn't like Tuesdays. Not a total success, but at the very least I had now revealed that I was a little odd, which is, I like to think...a little charming and truthfully, I just wanted to talk to someone. When you want to talk, talk. Tell people stories, without them asking first. " -Chelsea Talks Smack

Loosen

When we value being cool and in control over granting ourselves the freedom to unleash the passionate, goofy, heartfelt, and soulful expressions of who we are, we betray ourselves. When we consistently betray ourselves, we can expect to do the same to the people we love.  

~ Brené Brown

Moving

"We are defined by the stories we tell ourselves. Is it empowering you to live what you were born to do, or not empowering? You decide."

"Your biography is not your destiny.  Your decisions are."

"Emotions are created by motion. Emotions are tied to the way you move."


-Tony Robins 

Lot and His Woman

But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human. So she was turned to a pillar of salt. So it goes. People aren’t supposed to look back. I’m certainly not going to do it anymore.

— Kurt Vonnegut 

Maps

Stephen King, Hearts in Atlantis

Thoughts

The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it.

—  Eckhart Tolle 

Goodness

It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.

— Leo Tolstoy 

Need

Always learn poems by heart. They have to become the marrow in your bones. Like fluoride in the water, they’ll make your soul impervious to the world’s soft decay.

— Jane Fitch, White Oleander

Understand

I’m a person who relies very heavily on intuition and feeling out the situation, so I’ve never really made a five-year plan or anything like that, if it’s right, it will fall into place and if not, I understand.

— Emma Stone 

Letting Go

The minute you start enjoying yourself and the person who you’ve become, when you walk into a room with your head held high, the minute you wake up and are glad to be you, the possibilities and opportunities will come knocking at your door.

— (via wordsandlyrics)

Leo Babauta

“Instead of focusing on how much you can accomplish, focus on how much you can absolutely love what you’re doing. Be there completely. It’s amazing how much non-resistance and presence changes everything.” -Leo Babauta

Questions

“…I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don’t search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903
in Letters to a Young Poet

Act

"What if we just acted like everything was easy." - Mary Ann Radmacher

Maybe in part

“People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention so you can change your life.

A true soul mate is probably the most important person you’ll ever meet, because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But to live with a soul mate forever? Nah. Too painful. Soul mates, they come into your life just to reveal another layer of yourself to you, and then leave.

A soul mates purpose is to shake you up, tear apart your ego a little bit, show you your obstacles and addictions, break your heart open so new light can get in, make you so desperate and out of control that you have to transform your life, then introduce you to your spiritual master…”

”

Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love 

Hemingway

“The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life — and one is as good as the other.”

Ernest Hemingway

Attention

“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity.”

Simone Weil

Missing

“I like to see people reunited, I like to see people run to each other, I like the kissing and the crying, I like the impatience, the stories that the mouth can’t tell fast enough, the ears that aren’t big enough, the eyes that can’t take in all of the change, I like the hugging, the bringing together, the end of missing someone.”

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, Jonathan Safran Foer

T.S. Language

"For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice." -T.S. Eliot

James Joyce

“My eyes were often full of tears (I could not tell why) and at times a flood from my heart seemed to pour itself out into my bosom. I thought little of the future. I did not know whether I would ever speak to her or not or, if I spoke to her, how I could tell her of my confused adoration. But my body was like a harp and her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires.”

- James Joyce

Fitzgerald

"For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the strength to start all over again." -F. Scott Fitzgerald

Holy Waiting

From here.

" I began to be transformed by the idea that there was something deeply holy in my waiting.  I decided I wanted this waiting, yes I actually wanted it!  I was going to stick with it for as long as need be and happily so. "

Teaching

"We work in the dark, we do what we can, we give what we have, our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task, the rest is the madness of art." - William James

Adele on Timing your own pace

From here.

"No, I have absolutely no intention of going into acting or making perfumes. I am a singer. I will stick to what I am good at and not spread myself thin and become mediocre at everything I do.” In other words, Adele does not want to become a brand. Who wants to work that hard? “I find it quite exhausting,” she says of being a singer. “It wears me out. And I have a tendency to think I am missing out on things. When I am busy and on tour, I feel like I’m stuck in this bubble, and all my friends are going forward with things. But if I get emotional about it and Skype them, they say, ‘There’s nothing going on here. Absolutely nothing.’ So that’s what wears me out. Constantly feeling paranoid about my life, that it’s going to disappear and they are all going to forget me.”

“I’m in it for the long run,” she says. “I don’t want to be disposable. You’re only as good as your next record. I’m not scared of losing this. I won’t come out with new music until it’s better than 21. I’m not expecting to sell as many records, but I don’t want to release shit. Also, I have nothing to write about! I’d be lying. And that would go against everything I’ve ended up building for myself."

Water

"I want to be like water. I want to slip through fingers, but hold up a ship." - Michelle Williams

Moment

From here.

"You will be compelled to act, when you are meant to.

The nudge, the "go on now...." the stumble into action, the 1. 2. and jump before you can reach 3.... you know the difference between the times you've made calculated decisions and the times a seemingly imaginary force shovesyou..... you will be. compelled act, when you are meant to."  -ChelseaTalksSmack

Creed

George Albert Smith "made a list of resolutions that he called his "personal creed" - 11 ideals that he committed to live by:

'I would be a friend to the friendless and find joy in ministering to the needs of the poor.'

'I would visit the sick and afflicted and inspire in them a desire for faith to be healed.'

'I would teach the truth to the understanding and blessing of all mankind.'

'I would seek out the erring one and try to win him back to righteous and a happy life.'

'I would not seek to force people to live up to my ideals but rather love them into doing the thing that is right.'

'I would live with the masses and help to solve their problems that their earth life may be happy.'

'I would avoid the publicity of high positions and discourage flattery of thoughtless friends.'

'I would not knowingly wound the feelings of any, not even one who may have wronged me, but would seek to do him good and make him my friend.'

'I would overcome the tendency to selfishness and jealousy and rejoice in the successes of all the children of my Heavenly Father.'

'I would not be an enemy to any living soul.'

Exposure

From here.

"Let go of the cards.  I felt so naked, so revealed. It didn’t really matter how much you learned or didn’t learn in graduate school; teaching was about exposure.  It began to occur to me that every job had an unspoken emotional requirement that, while never listed in any job description, was just as vital to one’s success as those qualifications that were.  Doctors had to be able to cope with facing the grief of others; lawyers had to be willing to assert themselves even when they didn’t feel like, and teachers had to feel the exposure of all eyes on them, of being the starting spot for everything in the room.  You could be a genius—which clearly I wasn’t, am not—and still not be up for teaching if the emotional requirement of the job—the ability to handle this exposure–were beyond your reach.  It seemed like someone might’ve mentioned that to me somewhere along the way or that it should have occurred to me. But they didn’t and it didn’t." Theo Nestor

Choose Scarcity or Abundance

source found here. "Don’t you love that idea? Someone (God) in the universe knows your wants and needs and dreams and it preparing something wonderful just for you. Oh, I know some people believe in the scarcity mentality– good news is a slice of pie and there’s only so much to go around. But I believe in abundance; every time I hear happy news I believe it foretells happiness for you and you and you and me too. “Men are, that they might have joy.” 2 Ne. 2:27 God wants us be happy." -Michelle L.

Quotidiana

"An essay is the best way to show that everything is connected to everything else."


-Phillip Lopate, editor of The Art of the Personal Essay speaking on Montaigne - regarding the book Quotidiana

http://www.quotidiana.org

Age Style

“I think if women put some more of the time and money they put on their heads in their heads, they’d be better off. I mean, nobody’s going to think you’re thirty-two, so what’s the point?” -Iris Apfel

Connection

"Creativity is just connecting things."

Steve Jobs

Details

"If this laundry list of observations seems excessive or odd, I can only say that this is what it means to be a novelist.  You have to be madly in love with the details."
-Barbara Kingsolver on The Poisonwood Bible

Words

Sherrilyn Kenyon, Acheron

Bono

"And this wise man asked me to stop. He said, "Stop asking God to bless what you’re doing. Get involved in what God is doing -- because it’s already blessed. Well, let's get involved in what God is doing. God, as I say, is always with the poor. That's what God is doing. That's what He’s calling us to do." -Bono

Read full talk here

Charity

"Perhaps the greatest charity comes when we are kind to each other, when we don't judge or categorize someone else, when we simply give each other the benefit of the doubt or remain quiet. Charity is accepting someone's differences, weaknesses, and shortcomings; having patience with someone who has let us down, or resisiting the impulse to become offended when someone doesn't handle something the way we might have hoped. Charity is refusing to take advantage of another's weakness and being willing to forgive someone who has hurt us. Charity is expecting the best of each other." --Elder Marvin J. Ashton