Go Toward the Dark

"People who deny the existence of dragons are often eaten by dragons from within."

-Ursula K. LeGuin

Be Real

"Authenticity doesn't mean airing out all your dirty laundry, but it does mean really and truly living in your own skin. Your skin has bruises. It has imperfections. There are parts of it that you probably don't like and you might be worried that other people might not like them either. Authenticity isn't perfect or safe, but it is REAL. There is intrinsic value in who you really are, not who you want to be, or wish you were, but who you really are and how you really feel. The real you is where passion happens. It's where progress happens. It's where compassion and truth and adventure happen."

-Lindsey Saletta, columnist  @limitlessgeneration

Be Like Trees

"Around me the trees stir in their leaves and call out 'stay awhile'..The light flows from their branches. And they call again, 'It's simple,' they say, 'And you too have come into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled with light, and to shine."

-Mary Oliver

October, Stay

"October is the fallen leaf, but it is also a wider horizon more clearly seen. It is the distant hills once more in sight, and the enduring constellations above them once again."

-Hal Borland

Silence and Love

“If I loved you less, I might be able to talk about it more.”

- Jane Austen, Emma 

October

“It’s so strange that autumn is so beautiful; yet everything is dying.”

- ?

Reflections

"He glanced back at the wall. How like a mirror, too, her face. Impossible; for how many people did you know who reflected your own light to you? People were more often—he searched for a simile, found one in his work—torches, blazing away until they whiffed out. How rarely did other people’s faces take of you and throw back to you your own expression, your own innermost trembling thought?”

- Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451 

October

“Rain on roof outside window, gray light, deep covers and warm blankets. Rain and nip of autumn in air; nostalgia, itch to work better and bigger. That crisp edge of autumn.”

- The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, 26 August 1956 in Paris 

October & Harry

“October arrived, spreading a damp chill over the grounds and into the castle. Madam Pomfrey, the nurse, was kept busy by a sudden spate of colds among the staff and students. Raindrops the size of bullets thundered on the castle windows for days on end; the lake rose, the flower beds turned into muddy streams, and Hagrid’s pumpkins swelled to the size of garden sheds.”

- J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets  

Well, Crap

“Better to be at the bottom of a ladder you want to climb than in the middle of some ladder you don’t, right?”

- Dave Eggers, The Circle 

Sundowner's Cure

“Take long walks in stormy weather or through deep snows in the fields and woods, if you would keep your spirits up. Deal with brute nature. Be cold and hungry and weary.”

- Henry David Thoreau 

Fruits of Theology

"I am more interested in your fruit than I am your theology. If your knowledge doesn’t better equip you to love, it’s worthless."

Mattie Montgomery

Common Uncommon

via Sycamore Street Press

Simplify!

"Our life is frittered away by detail. Simplify, simplify.

-Henry David Thoreau

Letter to Self

"A story is a letter that the author writes to himself, to tell himself things that he would be unable to discover otherwise."

-Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Just Jump

"I always did something I was a little not ready to do. I think that's how you grow." 

– Mariska Mayer, CEO of Yahoo 

Poetry Patterns

 "Poetry isn't one thing that serves one purpose. It's a way of making patterns that put emotions into words."

Stephen Burt