catching phrases:

"What do you plan to do with all your freedom?" -Tori Amos

"That's the way I want to be: colorful and crazy loud and absolutely free." -Winter Machine

"When I was fifteen, I knew it was over/ the road to enchantment was not mine to take/ 'cause lower calf, upper arm/ should be half what they are/ I was breaking the laws that the signmakers made/ and all I could eat/ was the poisonous apple/ and that's not a story I was meant to survive/ and I was all out of choices/ but the woman of voices/ she turned round the corner/ with music around her/ she gave me the language that keeps me alive/ she said, "I'm so glad that you finally made it here/ with the things you know now/ that only time can tell/ looking back, seeing far, landing right where you are/ and oh, you're aging well..." -Dar Williams

"but i know i.ve got the best blues a good woman on a bad day can get." -mess

"be courageous when the mind deceives you be courageous" -Zbigniew Herbert

"I have had something to prove/ as long as I know there's something that needs improvement/ and you know that every time I move/ I make a woman's movement/ and first you decide what you've gotta do/ and then you go out and do it/ and maybe the most that we can do/ is just to see each other through it..." -Ani Difranco

"Walk through the gloomy ways of doubt/ With the torch of vision in your hand." -Aldous Huxley

"You are not Atlas carrying the world on your shoulder; it is good to remember that the planet is carrying you." -Vandana Shiva

"If after every tempest came such calms, may the winds blow til they have wakened death." -Othello

"What prevents you? The future. The future tense,/ immense as outer space./ You could get lost there./ No. Nothing is so simple...Where is it coming from, this echo,/ this huge No that surrounds you... -Margaret Atwood

"Right here and right now/ I'm at peace with myself/ I'm quiet, I'm calm, I'm at ease..." -Georgy Rock

"When you're going through hell, keep going." -Winston Churchill

"Listen to the mustn'ts, child/ listen to the don'ts/ listen to the shouldn'ts, the impossibles, the won'ts/ listen to the never haves/ then listen close to me/ anything can happen, child/ anything can be." -Shel Silverstein

"You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem and smarter than you think." -Winnie the Pooh

"it takes courage to grow up and become who you really are." -e.e. cummings

"I wake up, and I ask myself what state I'm in/ and I say well, I'm lucky/ cos I am like east Berlin/ I had this wall/ and what I knew of the free world/ was that I could see their fireworks/ and I could hear their radio/ and I thought that if we met/ I would only start confessing/ and they'd know that I was scared/ they would know that I was guessing/ but the wall came down/ and there they stood before me/ with their stumbling and their mumbling/ and their calling out/ just like me..." -Dar Williams

"It's not how screwed up you are; it's how injured you feel." -one of the good therapists

"There is a brokenness out of which comes the unbroken. There is a shatteredness out of which blooms the unshatterable. There is a sorrow beyond all grief which leads to joy; and a fragility out of whose depths emerges strength. There is a hollow space too vast for words through which we pass with each loss, out of whose darkness we are sanctioned into being." -Rashani

"I will not be afraid to let my talent shine." -Ani DiFranco

"At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want. -Lao-Tzu

"So go ahead, push your luck/ Say what it is you've got to say to me/ We will push on into that mystery/ And it'll push right back/ And there are worse things than that/...'Cause when you live in a world/ Well it gets in to who you thought you'd be/ And now I laugh at how the world changed me/ And I think life chose me after all..." -Dar Williams

"It's not over till you've won." -The Secret Garden (musical)

"what a life/ what a trip/ I do believe I'm making it fit/ what a buzz/ what a ride/ do you want to jump inside?/ there is room for two/ there is room..." -Melissa Ferrick

"We are on time, and we are where we need to be. We can be trusted. [ +/- So can God.] And letting go and gratitude still work. Keep your head up and your heart open. And let's see what's next." -Melody Beattie

"You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe deserve your love and affection." -Buddhist expression

"I am wondering why, if all of us want to be loved for who we are, we spend so much time and energy trying to be someone else, trying to change the way we look, act, feel, think. I am wondering who we think we are beneath the trying, and what would happen if we stopped trying." -Geneen Roth

"I am alive when tomorrow's hope means more to me than yesterday's mistakes." -Unknown

"A person who feels flawed and defective feels powerless and helpless. Such a person can alter her feelings of defectiveness by helping and taking care of others. When she is cartaking others, she feels good about herself. So the goal of the caretaker is the caretaking, not the good of the person being cared for. The caretaking is an activity that distracts one from one's feelings of inadequacy. Distraction is a way to mood alter." -John Bradshaw

"That is a strong addiction, the need of approval, isn't it? I'm on the patch right now, actually. It releases small doses of approval until I no longer need it; then I'm going to rip it off." -Ellen DeGeneres

"I found the secret to life: I'm ok when everything is not ok." -Tori Amos

"We live our lives according to a tape made thirty years ago by people we wouldn't even ask directions from today." -Geneen Roth

"One cannot creep where one feels the impulse to soar." -Helen Keller

"They can call me crazy if I fail/ all the chance that I need/ is one in a million/ and they can call me brilliant/ if I succeed." -Ani Difranco

"We are all miracles in progress." -friend of a friend

"There was nobody trying to sell their souls; they were only trying to buy them back." -Dar Williams

"Buildings and bridges are made to bend into the wind/ to withstand the world that's what it takes/ all that steel and stone is no match for the air, my friend/ what doesn't bend breaks, what doesn't bend breaks..." -Ani DiFranco

"Thanks to you, I had a nervous breakthrough." -Luscious Jackson

"Leave the pity and the blame/ For the ones who do not speak/ You write the words to get respect and compassion/ And for posterity/ You write the words and make believe/ There is truth in the space between." -Tracy Chapman

"Believe me or believe me not/ I have a truth to tell." -Frank Ochberg

"You do not have to be good./ You do not have to walk/ on your knees for a hundred miles/ through the desert repenting./ You only have to let/ the soft animal of your body/ love what it loves. -Mary Oliver

"Surviving is the best revenge." -unknown

"Pretty women wonder/ where my secret lies./ I'm not cute or built to suit/ a fashion model's size/ But when I start to tell them,/ they think I'm telling lies./ I say, It's in the reach of my arms,/ The span of my hips,/ The stride of my step,/ The curl of my lips./ I'm a woman/ Phenomenally./ Phenomenal woman,/ That's me." -Maya Angelou

"People are like tea bags. Put them in hot water; they grow stronger." -unknown

"A death blow/ is a life blow/ to some/ who till they died/ did not alive become." -Emily Dickinson

"Life itself is reason enough for live. All else is nothing but the salespitch of pain." -devo

"Challenges come so we can grow and be prepared for things we are not equipped to handle now. When we face our challenges with faith, prepared to learn, willing to make changes, and if necessary, to let go, we are demanding our power be turned on." -Iyanla Vanzant

"You already know enough. So do I. It it not knowledge we lack. What is missing is the courage to understand what we know and to draw conclusions." -Sven Lindqvist

"Now, I know, don't decide for me!/ Now at last it's clear!/ And don't think I'm that little girl they wanted me to be!/ They don't know me now, fighting to be free/ There's no on here to understand! When will someone hear?/ I will carry on, till the fear has gone/ Till the day I find there's someone who will hear..." -Martin Guerre

"There's a truth that you have missed/ I don't need proof that I exist/ You don't know I'm far away/ From those awful things you say." -Sleater-Kinney

"If you allow yourself to feel the way you really feel, maybe you won't be afraid of that feeling anymore." -Tori Amos

I deserve good things. I am entitled to my share of happiness. I refuse to beat myself up...I'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggonit, people like me!" -Stuart Smalley

"You'll be given love/ you'll be taken care of/ Maybe not from the sources/ you have poured yours/ Maybe not from the directions/ you are staring at/ Twist your head around/ It's all around/ All is full of love/ All around you." -Bjork

"Today is the day you are born/ remember the way today feels/ never forget you're alive/ never forget you are loved/ and worthy..." -Coleman Lindberg

"Permit yourself anger/ and permit me mine." -Margaret Atwood

"Open up your cage/ focus all your rage/ the world needs people like you." -Live

"Something inside me is begging to be freed." -Tracy Bonham

"I found a bigger life, so I had to buy some bigger jeans." -a miracle-in-progress

"Everything I need is right here in my hands." -Melissa Ferrick

"It is impossible that others will ever love you as much as you can love yourself or hate you as much as you can hate yourself...We are our best lovers and worst enemies." -Cameron

"When you struggle with an addiction, you deal directly with the healing of your soul. You deal directly with the matter of your life. This is the work that is required to be done. As you face your deepest struggles, you reach for your highest goal. As you bring to light, heal, and release the deepest currents of negativity within you, you allow the energy of your soul to move directly into and to shape, the experiences and events of physical reality, and thereby to accomplish unimpeded its tasks upon the Earth. This is the work of evolution. It is the work that you were born to do." -Gary Zukav

"Forget your mistakes, but remember what they taught you." - Dorothy Galyean

"You have the right to remain silent. You also have the right to be heard." -YPI

"Self-defense was in times of true danger." -Alanis Morisette

"Even the sky is no limit." -Unknown

"Few situations- no matter how greatly they appear to demand it- can be bettered by us going beserk." -Melody Beattie

"I...do not hope to alter the world. perhaps I can put it best by saying I hope to alter my own vision of the world. I want to be more and more myself." -Henry Miller

"I’m not afraid/ I’m not ashamed/ I’m going to live my life my own damn way...I’m gonna be myself if it’s the last thing that I do.” -Sista Otis

"We are on a continual treasure hunt in recovery. One of the treasures we're seeking is the emotional part of ourselves. We don't have to do it perfectly. We need only be honest, open, and willing to try. Our emotions are there waiting to share themselves with us." -Melody Beattie

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how." -Nietchze

“now the ears of my ears awake and/now the eyes of my eyes are opened.” -ee cummings

"Courage is not the towering oak that sees storms come and go; it is the fragile blossom that opens in the snow." -Alice Mackenzie Swaim

"Warning: I have a voice, and I know how to use it." -me

"The walls we build around us to keep out the sadness also keep out the joy.” -Jim Rohn

"Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it." -Helen Keller

"You'll see it when you believe it." -Unknown

"No more invisible speechless, deaf and blind child/ With neglected pleasures being addicted to denial/ Floating through time, gravitating towards a warm arm/ With an appetite for the emptiness that promises no harm/ No more uncontrollable eruptions of emotional depression/ A primal S.O.S. from the barren prison of selfless expression/ That only the guilty with innocent souls know/ Buried in social scar tissue of defective ego/...No more - forever no more - because I've unshut my eyes." -Mary J Blige (thanks perdiendome)

"Sometimes, the selfless choice is not the best one." –Cameron

“Everyday/ you walk with longer step/ you walk with stronger step/ the worst is over.” -Les Mis

"Reward is not exclusively earned in accomplishing a task. Sometimes reward is earned just in the making of the attempt." -Unknown

"Give me life/ give me pain/ give me myself again." -Tori Amos

"This is the last time I bleed for you." -Fuel

"It's time I got to know the girl you didn't want me to believe I was." -last line of my g'bye letter (to the illness)

“My heart is set/ On living – I have heroes to beget.” -Edna St. Vincent Millay

“I know I’ve got some magic/ buried deep in my heart.” -Tori Amos

You know that you're getting better. You just need to believe that health is in sight for a little while longer, and you might just get there. –Cameron

“I’ll sell my silence for a song now. ...When mountains crumble and stars collide I am what remains.” -The Crüxshadows

“Oh, she takes care of herself/ She can wait if she wants/ She's ahead of her time/ Oh, and she never gives out/ And she never gives in/ She just changes her mind.” -Billy Joel

“I can't believe the key, / the door, the clouds that blocked the sun/ they were all in my mind/ now I'm one with the fools of love.” -Live

"To have an Eating Disorder is to have a disease of the self-esteem, and to have a broken coping mechanism. Eating Disorders are about being addicted to a behavior that makes it easy to temporarily forget problems and feelings of depression and self hate, stress and anxiety, guilt and pressure. Just like alcohol is a symptom of alcoholism, food is a symptom of Anorexia, Bulimia or Compulsive Overeating. The real issues are hidden away in each sufferer’s heart and mind." -Amy Medina

"come celebrate with me that everyday/ something has tried to kill me/ and has failed." -Lucille Clifton

"I am...making history one day at a time." -alice-toric

"You will not have to give up anything until you are ready and then there will be something to take its place." -Joanne Greenberg

"Perfectly natural is an oxymoron." -me

"When will women not be compelled/ to view their bodies as science projects,/ gardens to be weeded,/ dogs to be trained?/ when will women cease/ to be made of pain?" -Marge Piercy

"I'm alive out of sheer determination." -Bessie Delaney

"We must someday make a test to show us where the health is as well as the illness...The hidden strength is too deep a secret. But in the end...it is our only ally." -Joanne Greenberg

"Even the sky is no limit." -Unknown

"Reach for the moon. Even if you miss, you'll land among the stars." -Unknown

"Their very illness made them examine sanity as few 'sane' people could." -Joanne Greenberg

"It is kind of like Humpty Dumpty - when he fell of the wall no one could put him back together again... He could have." -a friend

"With this strength/ I will fall down and get back up/ I am young and my bones/ They just don't want to give up/ I will suck the air up/ I will push my blood up/ I will raise my feet up/ Because you know/ Time flies/ Just like you and I..." -Melissa Ferrick

"I can't go on; I'll go on." -Samuel Beckett

"We've been nothing long enough. Who says zero is a size?" -unknown

"I'll tell you how the sun rose - a ribbon at a time." -Emily Dickinson

"Recovery is a process, not an event." -unknown

"Those who don't make mistakes don't make discoveries." -unknown

"Life is what is coming, not what was." -Bible

"If we listened to our intellect, we'd never have a love affair. We'd never have a friendship. We'd never go into business because we'd be cynical. Well, that's nonsense. You've got to jump off cliffs all the time and build your wings on the way down." -Ray Bradbury

"I'm the one who has to die when it's time for me to die, so let me live my life the way I want to." -Jimi Hendrix

"Nobody can be exactly like me. Sometimes even I have trouble doing it." -Tallulah Bankhead

"Identity is shaped through conflict and opposition." -Camille Paglia

"Accept no one's definition of your life. Define yourself." -Harvey Fierstein

"Not knowing when the dawn will come, I open every door." -Emily Dickinson

"There is an important difference between giving up and letting go." -Jessica Hatchigan

"The best way out is always through." -Robert Frost

"Better to light a candle than to curse the darkness." -Chinese Proverb

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by each experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, I have lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along." -Eleanor Roosevelt

"Courage is not the lack of fear. It is acting in spite of it." -Mark Twain

"To believe in something, and not live it is dishonest." -Ghandi

"Our problem is not that we aim too high and miss, but that we aim too low and hit." -Aristotle

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them." -Henry David Thoreau

"Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

"This is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning." -Winston Churchill

"If you want to know your past, look into your present conditions. If you want to know your future, look into your present actions." -Chinese proverb

"I would rather feel things in extreme than not at all." -Bonnie Raitt

"A heart that hurts is a heart that works." -Juliana Hatfield

"Your sacred space is where you can find yourself again and again." -Joseph Campbell

"Reexamine all that you have been told in school, or in church or in any book. Dismiss whatever insults your soul." -Walt Whitman

"I am sick and tired of being sick and tired." -Melissa Ferrick

"The man who removes a mountain begins by carrying away small stones." -William Faulkner

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody." -Bill Cosby

"You cannot heal what you do not feel." -unknown

"One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore." -Unknown

"One way leads to diamonds,/ One way leads to gold,/ Another leads you only/ To everything you're told.// In your heart you wonder/ Which of these is true;/ The road that leads to nowhere,/ The road that leads to you.// Will you find the answer/ In all you say and do?/ Will you find the answer/ In you?" -Roma Ryan

"I'm not afraid to make my life my own/ I'll find out who I am and who I was/ I'll take this chance I've found/ I was blind, but not this time/ I'll define my life this time/ The choice is mine to get it right this time/ I believe what I feel/ What my soul needs to heal/ This time around..." -Jerry Leichtling

"If you never did, you should. These things are fun, and fun is good." -Dr. Seuss

"The quest to be beautiful is not worth the beauty of a human life." -Stephanie Lewis

"Learn to use the voice that gets you through this life the best." -Winter Machine

"If there's anything left you need it now/ reach deep inside yourself/ show them all how/ you can survive." -Melissa Ferrick

"Life is either a daring adventure or nothing. Security does not exist in nature nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than exposure." -Helen Keller

"There will come a time when you believe everything is finished. That will be the beginning." -Louis L'Amour

"The healthy and strong individual is the one who asks for help when he needs it. Whether he's got an abscess on his knee or in his soul." -Rona Barrett

"Turn your wounds into wisdom." -Oprah Winfrey

"When written in Chinese the word 'crisis' is composed of two characters - one represents danger and the other represents opportunity." -John F. Kennedy

"There is in every true woman's heart a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity; but which kindles up, and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity." -Washington Irving

"I have woven a parachute out of everything broken." -William Stafford

"The darkest hour has only sixty minutes." -Morris Mandel

"Rock bottom is good solid ground, and a dead end street is just a place to turn around." -Buddy Buie and J.R. Cobb

"You can run from your pain, but you will tire long before it does." -Unknown

"I have heard there are troubles of more than one kind./ Some come from ahead and some come from behind./ But I've bought a big bat. I'm all ready you see./ Now my troubles are going to have troubles with me!" -Dr. Seuss

"Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else." -Judy Garland

"He who trims himself to suit everyone will soon whittle himself away." -Raymond Hull

"How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone." -Gabrielle "Coco" Chanel

"Never be someone's slogan. For you are poetry." -28 Days

"If you cannot be a poet, be the poem." -David Carradine

"There is a great deal of unmapped country within us which would have to be taken into account in an explanation of our gusts and storms." -George Eliot

"When your heart speaks, take good notes." -Judith Campbell

"There is deep wisdom within our very flesh, if we can only come to our senses and feel it." -Elizabeth A. Behnke

"All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire, but my heart is all my own." -Johann von Goethe

"Never apologize for showing feeling. When you do so, you apologize for the truth." -Benjamin Disraeli

"Our faults are more pardonable than the means we use to conceal them." ~François, Duc de La Rochefoucauld

"Man can starve from a lack of self-realization as much as... from a lack of bread." -Richard Wright

"Don't dig your grave with your own knife and fork." -English Proverb

"A person often meets his destiny on the road he took to avoid it." -Jean de La Fontaine

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I intended to be." -Douglas Adams

"Your distress about life might mean you have been living for the wrong reason, not that you have no reason for living." -Tom O'Connor

"You have to leave the city of your comfort and go into the wilderness of your intuition. What you'll discover will be wonderful. What you'll discover is yourself." -Alan Alda

"Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us or we find it not." -Ralph Waldo Emerson

"There is nothing like returning to a place that remains unchanged to find the ways in which you yourself have altered." -Nelson Mandela

"There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom." -Anaïs Nin

"All men should strive/ to learn before they die/ what they are running from, and to, and why." -James Thurber

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will find them gradually, without noticing it, and live along some distant day into the answer. -Rainer Maria Rilke

"To the question of your life you are the answer, and to the problems of your life you are the solution." -Joe Cordare

"I loathe the expression 'What makes him tick.' It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solution, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm." -James Thurber

"We don’t have much truth to express unless we have gone into those rooms and closets and woods and abysses that we were told not to go into. When we have gone in and looked around for a long while - then we will be able to speak in our own voice and stay in the present moment. And that moment is home." -Anne Lammot

"The most exhausting thing you can do is to be inauthentic." –Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"I dote on myself …There is a lot of me, and all so luscious." –Walt Whitman

"Without emotion, there is no beauty." –Diana Vreeland

"There is an applause superior to that of the multitude – one’s own." –Elizabeth Elton Smith

"To express the emotions of life is to live." –Jane Heap

"The real moment of success is not the moment apparent to the crowd." –George Bernard Shaw

"Your first job is to get your own story straight." –Natalie Goldberg

"I had to leave home, so I could find myself, find my own intrinsic nature buried under the personality that had been imposed on me." –Gloria Anzaldua

"Like any art the creation of self is both natural and seemingly impossible. It requires training as well as magic." –Holly Near

"I’ve never quite believed that one chance is all I get." –Anne Tyler

"What do you plan to do with your own wild and precious life?" -Mary Oliver

"We find what we search for—or, if we don’t find it, we become it." –Jessamyn West

"Each relationship you have with another person reflects the relationship you have with yourself." –Alice Deville

"I found God in myself/ and I loved her/ I loved her fiercely." –Ntozake Shange

"Someday perhaps the inner light will shine forth from us, and then we shall need no other light." –Pierre Simon De Laplace

"A strong woman is a woman who loves strongly and weeps strongly and is strongly terrified and has strong needs." –Marge Piercy

"Only one thing is more frightening than speaking your truth. And that is not speaking." –Naomi Wolf

"Learning what’s going on inside you can be difficult, but it’s also invigorating, and the rewards are enormous. You can do anything if you only know what it is. And you’re about to find out." –Barbara Sher

"Never fear shadows. They simply mean there's a light shining somewhere nearby." -Ruth E. Renkel

"Courage is doing what you're afraid to do. There can be no courage unless you're scared." -Eddie Rickenbacker

"When we walk to the edge of all the light we have and take the step into the darkness of the unknown, we must believe that one of two things will happen. There will be something solid for us to stand on or we will be taught to fly." -Patrick Overton

We are radiant light and sacred dark - the balance. -Starhawk

"Everybody needs beauty as well as bread, places to play in and pray in, where nature may heal and give strength to body and soul." -John Muir

"Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does." -William James

"A loving heart is the truest wisdom." -Charles Dickens

"The rivulets about to stream from your eyes are not tears but waterways whose course if followed eventually leads home." -Dorothy ?Fudman?

"Don't water your weeds." -Harvey Mackay

"Our rewards will be manifold and come when we least expect them." -Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

"Anyone can carry his burden, however hard, until nightfall. Anyone can do his work, however hard, for one day. Anyone can live sweetly, patiently, lovingly, purely, till the sun goes down. And this is all life really means." -Robert Louis Stevenson

In life, there's gonna be times/ When you're feeling low/ And in your mind/ Insecurity seems to take control/ We start to look outside ourselves/ For acceptance and approval/ We keep forgetting that/ The one thing we should know is/ Don't be scared to fly alone/ Find a path that is your own/ Love will open every door/ It's in your hands/ The world is yours/ Don't hold back and always know/ All the answers will unfold/ What are you waiting for/ Spread your wings and soar." -Soar

Striving for excellence motivates you; striving for perfection is demoralizing. -Harriet Braiker

Do not be too timid and squeamish about your actions. All life is an experiment. The more experiments you make the better. What if they are a little course, and you may get your coat soiled or torn? What if you do fail, and get fairly rolled in the dirt once or twice. Up again, you shall never be so afraid of a tumble. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it. -Pablo Picasso

What great thing would you attempt if you knew you could not fail? -Robert H. Schuller

We are beautiful, no matter what they say./ Words won't bring us down./ We are beautiful in every single way..." -Beautiful"We get a little further from perfection/ each year on the road./ I think that's called character/ I think that's just the way it goes." -Ani DiFranco

"Perfect. I thank God that I'm not perfect." -Tracy Bonham

"It took me too long to realize that I don't take good pictures cos I have the kind of beauty that moves." -Ani DiFranco

i miss my denial and i miss my silence, but more than that i miss my voice. -loki42

"I am sick. I'm not as sick as I was. I'm getting better. I'm not as better as I'm going to be. It's all about perspective." -iwillsurvive

"I have a lot of questions right now. I know it's a free-will planet. Things happen. But you know that saying, Bad things don't happen to good people? That's a painful lie, and it hits you on such a core level. I know now that I have an appreciation for the miracle of life that I didn't have, but I don't believe in the saying that it all happens for the best... it's just not appropriate." -Tori Amos

"The only way to discover the limits of the possible is to venture past them into the impossible." -Arthur C. Clark

"Opportunities multiply as they are seized." -Sun Tzu

"If you only knock long enough and loud enough at the gate, you are sure to wake up somebody." -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Courage is in every tear you shed." -D.R. Durga

"There is always a risk in being alive, and if you are more alive, there is more risk." -Henrick Ibsen

"Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down." -Natalie Goldberg

"The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong in the broken places. -Ernest Hemingway

"Where there is great love there are always miracles." -Willa Cather

There is so much in the world for us all if we only have the eyes to see it, and the heart to love it, and the hand to gather it to ourselves." -Lucy Maud Montgomery

"This too will pass. I was taught these words by my grandmother as a phrase that is to be sued at all times in your life. When things are spectacularly dreadful, when things are absolutely appalling; when everything is superb and wonderful and marvelous and happy - say these four words to yourself. They will give you a sense of perspective and help you also to make the most of what is good and be stoical about what is bad." -Claire Rayner

"When your heart is in your dream, no request is too extreme." -Jiminy Cricket

"There is only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self." -Aldous Huxley

"I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it." -Pablo Picasso

"All serious daring starts from within." -Eudora Welty

"Nobody can give you wiser advice than yourself." -Cicero

"At some point, your heart will tell itself what to do." -Achaan Chah

"Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting. So... get on your way!" -Dr. Seuss

"Nothing splendid has ever been achieved except by those who dared believe that something inside them was superior to circumstance." -Bruce Barton

"Pray not for lighter burdens but for stronger backs." -Theodore Roosevelt

"It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not to deserve them." -Mark Twain

"Think twice before hesitating." -Paul Vincent

"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -Patrick Overton

"Every day you may make progress. Every step may be fruitful. Yet there will stretch out before you an ever-lengthening, ever-ascending, ever-improving path. You know you will never get to the end of the journey. But this, far from discouraging, only adds to the joy and glory of the climb." -Winston Churchill

"All things are difficult before they are easy." -John Norley

"A champion is the one who gets up, even when he can't." -Jack Dempsey

"In the presence of trouble, some people grow wings; others buy crutches." -Harold W. Ruoff

"Either I will find a way, or I will make one." -Philip Sydney

"At the bottom, things can only go up." -Unknown

"Things falling apart is a kind of testing and also a kind of healing. We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart. Then they come together again and fall apart again. It's just like that. The healing comes from letting there be room for all of this to happen: room for grief, for relief, for joy." -Pema Chodron