II

It’s very hard to grow, because it’s difficult to let go of the models of ourselves in which we’ve invested so heavily. —Ram Dass 

If the victories we create in our heads were let loose on reality, the world we know would drown in blazing happiness. —Patton Oswalt

You’re under no obligation to be the same person you were five minutes ago

You have a much better life if you wear impressive clothes. —Vivienne Westwood

I suppose it’s a comfort, perhaps a sense of self-control, doing worse damage to yourself than the world will ever dare inflict. — Chuck Palahniuk

When you’re traveling, you are what you are, right there and then. People don’t have your past to hold against you. No yesterdays on the road. —William Least-Heat Moon

What do you mean, “what can I do?” You can participate. You can connect. You can get actively involved. You can turn off the tv. You can cancel the Disney vacation and buy bushels of tomatoes to can or turn into salsa. You can get some pots and grow a pot garden… of vegetables. You can put a beehive on the roof of your house. Just like today— whatever today looks like— is the manifestation of billions of individual decisions accumulated over time, tomorrow will be too. We must stop this incessant victimhood mentality. Somebody else will not fix things. Somebody else will not make me healthy. Somebody else will not make me happy. These things are my responsibility. Not the neighbor’s, not the government’s, not the church or the civic club. —Joel Salatin

I wait and ache. —Sylvia Plath, “Three Women”

Knowing that you’re crazy doesn’t make the crazy things stop happening. —Mark Vonnegut, The Eden Express: A Memoir of Insanity

My biggest fear is that eventually you will see me the way I see myself. —Anonymous

It seemed that the only lover she had ever wanted was a lover in a dream. —F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and the Damned

When a girl feels that she’s perfectly groomed and dressed she can forget that part of her. That’s charm. —F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “Bernice Bobs Her Hair

On really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion.