To live honestly, truthfully and to be completely present is the ultimate enterprise.

"If you're out there you're vulnerable. People prefer to disappear in life, to repress their personality. That's not living. It's dying. I see them all over the place, the walking dead."

--Grace Jones

This life is collected in things we put in our pockets and people we could have married.

You wanna know what living life to the fullest actually is? It's waking up on a Monday morning with no complaints. It's knowing you always deserve to laugh. It's doing what feels right no matter what. It's doing what you want to, no matter how stupid you look. It's about being yourself, 'cause no one can tell you you're doing it wrong.

"Was I ever crazy? Maybe. Or maybe life is. Crazy isn’t being broken or swallowing a dark secret. It’s you or me amplified. If you ever told a lie and enjoyed it. If you ever wished you could be a child forever."

--'Girl, Interrupted'

"Ninety percent of the world's woes come from people not knowing themselves, their abilities, their frailties, and even their real virtues. Most of us go all the way through life as complete strangers to ourselves – so how can we know anyone else?"

--Sydney J. Harris

“The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof.”

--Barbara Kingsolver

"A lot of my early work, especially the reflections, was about what I call the surrealism of everyday life .. picking out the strangeness in the world we live in. Those doors are doors that could lead you to other worlds, or what is behind what is in front of you."

--Stephanie Torbert

"But in some ways, the most significant choices one makes in life are done for reasons that are not all that dramatic, not earth-shaking at all; often enough, the choices we make are, for better or for worse, made by default."

— Marya Hornbacher

The expected is what we live for. The unexpected is what changes our lives.

Whatever doesn't kill you, will probably try again.

The saddest thing that I can possibly think of is a dead bird, they make me think about how no matter how free you are one day you will die.

"Sooner or later we all discover that the important moments in life are not the advertised ones, not the birthdays, the graduations, the weddings, not the great goals achieved. The real milestones are less prepossessing. They come to the door of memory unannounced, stray dogs that amble in, sniff around a bit and simply never leave. Our lives are measured by these."

--Susan B. Anthony

"That is how you know you’ve left childhood behind -- when you wish for time to go backward."

--Alice Hoffman, 'Here On Earth'

"It’s the sort of day you wouldn’t mind losing completely, even if it meant your life would be twenty-four hours shorter."

--Alice Hoffman, 'Here On Earth'

What a world we live in. I want to be incredibly close to the heart of it all. To live honestly, truthfully and to be completely present is the ultimate enterprise. And right now, I couldn’t possibly ask for anything more. I am a very lucky girl.

There's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go.

"Promise me you'll always remember: You're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think."

--Christopher Robin to Pooh

It's so hard to forget pain, but it's even harder to remember sweetness. We have no scar to show for happiness. We learn so little from peace.

"Just when you think it can't get any worse, it can. And just when you think it can't get any better, it can."

--Nicholas Sparks, 'At First Sight'

Sacrifice. We all make them. You kept thinking about what you lost. You didn’t get it. Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something to regret. It’s something to aspire to.

"We're all susceptible to it, the dread and anxiety of not knowing what's coming. It's pointless in the end, because all the worrying and the making of plans for things that could or could not happen, it only makes things worse. So walk your dog or take a nap. Just whatever you do, stop worrying. Because the only cure for paranoia is to be here, just as you are."

--'Grey's Anatomy'

Pain beats regret every day of the week and twice on Sunday.

"Adopt the pace of nature; her secret is patience."

--Ralph Waldo Emerson

You can't stop the future, you can't rewind the past. The only way to learn the secret is to press play.

"Hope is the thing with feathers, that perches in the soul, and sings the tune without words, and never stops at all."

--Emily Dickenson

"Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go."

--E.E. Cummings

Travel, travel, travel. Do not settle into the life of the normal average citizen, be more. Realize that time helps, when nothing else can. And that there are two types of people in this world, those who are unhappy, and those who do whatever it takes to ensure their happiness, and you are one of those people.

“There is no such thing as was. To me, no man is himself, he is the sum of his past. There is no such thing really as was, because the past is. It is part of every man, every woman, and every moment.”

--William Faulkner

"Some men have thousands of reasons why they cannot do what they want to, when all they need is one reason why they can."

--Willis Whitney

"Charm. It's a sort of bloom on a woman. If you have it you don't need to have anything else; and if you don't have it, it doesn't much matter what else you have."

--James Matthew Barrie

"It is good that the young are beautiful; it is the only advantage they have."

--The Duchess of Windsor

We would often be sorry if our wishes were granted.

"There are two days in the week on which I never worry; One is yesterday and the other is tomorrow."

--Robert Burdette

Independence is the part that drew you in

You said I like the way you know a thing or two

You gotta have hope

You gotta have something

There's always a reason to break

Hope

'Cause nothing less

Will save the day

"Isn't it sad to be in a place where everything is so unbelievable you'd believe anything?"

--'Go Ask Alice'

"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. And what it wouldn't be, it would. You see?"

--'Alice in Wonderland'

"I do not know anyone who has got to the top without hard work. That is the recipe. It will not always get you to the top, but should get you pretty near.”

--Margaret Thatcher

She only drinks coffee at midnight

When the moment is not right

Her timing is quite unusual

You see her confidence is tragic

but her intuition: magic

Just my imagination speaking again.

You have to find something. Something that anchors you, something that keeps you looking forward. Even on the bad days, the days when you're tempted to look back.

She does, she did, and she'll do it again.

Promise yourself to be strong, that nothing can disturb your peace of mind. Look at the sunny side of everything and make your optimism come true. Think only of the best, work only for the best, and expect only the best. Forget the mistakes of the past and press on to the greater achievements of the future. Give so much time to the improvement of yourself that you have no time to criticize others. Live in the faith that the whole world is on your side as long as you are true to the best that is in you.

"Do not let your fire go out, spark by irreplaceable spark in the hopeless swaps of the not-quite, the not-yet, and the not-at-all. Do not let the hero in your soul perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved and have never been able to reach. The world you desire can be won. It exists.. it is real.. it is possible.. it's yours."
--Ayn Rand

It's when you cry just a little, but you laugh in the middle.

Walk with the dreamers, the believers, the courageous, the cheerful, the planners, the doers. The successful people with their heads in the clouds and their feet on the ground. Let their spirit ignite a fire within you to leave this world better than when you found it.

Did you ever wish that your eye was a camera? So when you blinked, there’d be a photograph. Just my imagination speaking again.

I shake a little, start a fire. Blow it out. Close my eyes when something scary is about to happen. A mix between fireflies and Christmas lights. Belly-ache year or two, not sure what to say, not sure what to do.

Hope is the only bee that makes honey without flowers.

You've gotta have hope.

"When the worst case scenario comes true, clinging to hope is all we've got left."

--Grey's Anatomy

I hope your dreams take you to the corners of your smile, to the highest of your hopes, and to the most special places your heart has ever known.

“Keep looking up,” mama used to tell me, “there’s nothing on the ground but your feet.”

Sorrow looks back, worry looks around, but FAITH looks up.

I hope that in the end, we can all laugh and say it was worth it.

"Beginnings are scary, endings are usually sad, but it's the middle that counts the most. You need to remember that when you find yourself at the beginning. Just give hope a chance to float up...and it will."

--'Hope Floats'

You've gotta have hope. Without hope life is meaningless. Without hope, life is meaning less and less.