#inspiration

"It's often a matter of sitting in front of the computer and worrying. It's what writing comes down to--worrying that things aren't going to work out."

"We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty."

"Destiny is a name often given in retrospect to choices that had dramatic consequences."

"You have to salvage what you can, even if you're the one who buried it in the first place."

"Your personal truth is your gift to the world."

"Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever."

"The more details, depth and thought you put into your ideas the more valuable they become."

"And so must learn to love with our mouths and voices, as well as with our eyes, flesh, heart, brains, and with everything we have, right down to our toenails. There is not anything about us that cannot love, and that is not called to love, and that is not destined to be turned, conformed, and reduced to pure love. It ...is the priceless deposit left by the burning away of selfishness."

"Every day, live in a way that honors who you are."

"Gaps don't/just happen./There is a/generative element/inside them,/a welling motion/as when cold/waters shoulder/up through/warmer oceans./And where gaps/choose to widen,/coordinates warp,/even in places/constant since/the oldest maps."

"File under "Hard Truths": the creative muse is fiction. If you sit around waiting for the right moment to create, you will die waiting."

"Sometimes you must stand still in order to get moving to where GOD wants you to go."

"There are no tyrants if there are no slaves."

"Obscurity and a competence—that is the life that is best worth living."

"Opposition can be your friend. Opposition can be the fire that tempers the better sword, as well as the ice that cools a fiery temper. Don't ever run from it; learn from it!"

"You're never as good as everyone tells you when you win, and you're never as bad as they say when you lose."

"Love' is the only weapon I have, I will defend with love, I will attack with love."

"You don't need to go running from pillar to post looking for what God looks like."

"You either have to write or you shouldn't be writing. That's all."

"We have different forms assigned to us in the school of life, different gifts imparted. All is not attractive that is good. Iron is useful, though it does not sparkle like the diamond. Gold has not the fragrance of a flower. So different persons have various modes of excellence, and we must have an eye to all."