Beauty was not simply something to behold

"Beauty was not simply something to behold; it was something one could do.” —Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye

Your armor

"I think midlife is when the universe gently places her hands upon your shoulders, pulls you close, and whispers in you ear: I'm not screwing around. It's time. All of this pretending and performing--these coping mechanisms that you're developed to protect yourself from feeling inadequate and getting hurt -- has to go.

Your armor is preventing you from growing into your gifts. I understand that you needed these protections when you were small. I understand that you believed your armor could help you secure all of the things you needed to feel worthy of love and belonging, but you're still searching and you're more lost than ever.

Time is growing short. There are unexplored adventures ahead of you. You can't live the rest of your life worried about what other people think. You were born worthy of love and belonging. Courage and daring are coursing through you. You were made to live and love with your whole heart. It's time to show up and be seen.

Brene Brown

Last Lines Shift

"When I teach writing I tell my students that the invisible, unwritten last line of every essay should be and nothing was ever the same again. By which I mean the reader should feel the ground shift, if only a little bit, when he or she comes to the end of the essay. Also, there should be something at stake in the writing of it. Or, better yet, everything."

Cheryl Strayed 

Triumph is Trying

"There's no end to the thread that I pull, it's electric like fire and light. It's an anthem majestic I weave, sing, shout, dabble in words or with easels. I see triumph as trying, not seeking appraisals so the heart is enabled."

Amelia Bethel

A Sunday Kind of Love

"I want to be with someone, who dreams of doing everything in life, and nothing, on a rainy Sunday afternoon."

Atticus

To Judge

"To judge someone before understanding that person is a form of human rejection and feeds upon itself. It intensifies personal insecurities, necessitating more judgment (prejudice) and less understanding. The processes continue in this vicious cycle."

-Stephen R. Covey, Spiritual Roots of Human Relations

Made of Layers

"We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another, unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made of layers, cells, constellations."

-Anais Nin

Faith and Talking to Yourself

"Faith begins with how you talk to yourself."

"Dwelling obsessively on what we do wrong is one of the greatest sources of interference to maximizing our potential."

-Craig Manning, BYU

Because that's the sort of thing I'm always saying...

" People are always telling you that change is a good thing. But all they're really saying is that something you didn't want to happen at all... has happened. My store is closing this week. I own a store, did I ever tell you that? It's a lovely store, and in a week it will be something really depressing, like a Baby Gap. Soon, it'll just be a memory. In fact, someone, some foolish person, will probably think it's a tribute to this city, the way it keeps changing on you, the way you can never count on it, or something. I know because that's the sort of thing I'm always saying. But the truth is... I'm heartbroken. I feel as if a part of me has died, and my mother has died all over again, and no one can ever make it right."

You've Got Mail, Nora Ephron

Good Night Dear Void

"Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life - well, valuable, but small - and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? I don't really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void."

You've Got Mail, Nora Ephron

Tangled Path

"You'll never untangle the circumstances that have brought you to this moment."

Leonard Cohen

Mercilessly

"Don't bend; don't water it down;
don't try to make it logical;
don't edit your own soul according to the fashion.
Rather, follow your  most intense obsessions mercilessly."

-Franz Kafka

Voice of Disturbing Desire

"May you have the courage to listen to the voice of desire that disturbs you when you have settled for something safe."

-John O Donahue

Whenever is Now

"Whoever is present are the right people.

Whenever it begins is the right time.

Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened.

And when it's over, it's over."

-Anne Lamott, Assembly Required

Disconnect

"Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you."

-Anne Lamott

Hope Muscle Memory

"Hope, like every virtue, is a choice that becomes a habit that becomes spiritual muscle memory. It's a renewable resource for moving through lie as it is, not as we wish it to be."

-Krista Tippett

How Alive and I Willing to Be?

"The business of being a writer is ultimately about asking yourself, how alive am I willing to be?"

-Anne Lamott

What do you believe about mistakes?

"Of all the pitfalls in our paths and the tremendous delays and wanderings off the track I want to say that they are not what they seem to be...All that seems like fantastic mistakes are not mistakes, all that seems like error is not error; and it all has to be done. That which seems like a false step is the next step."

-Agnes Martin

Schooled

"There is a time for departure even when there's no certain place to go."

-Tennessee Williams

Writing and Teaching

"I hate teaching as much as I love teaching, and I love teaching immensely. But who am I to teach writing? 
------------------

Teaching is the first job I actually care — too much? — about.
---------------------

“What if you could just show up?” my therapist asked me when I was complaining about the lackadaisical teenagers in a writing course I was teaching.

“What if you didn’t have to teach them anything?”

“What if you could still be learning and teach at the same time?” she asked.
----------------------

On the Amtrak back to Hudson, I pull my students’ pages out of my backpack, sip my wine on ice, and escape into the tragic comfort of their unhappy endings. I draw tiny red hearts above the sentences I love."

-Chloe Caldwell, Major Dramatic Question