Quote of the Day

“Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”
- Anna Quindlen

Quote of the Day

"Your quiet support means the world to me, as does your tacit endorsement of all my behaviors."
- Leslie Knope, Parks and Recreation 4.8

Quote of the Day

"Optimist: Someone who figures that taking a step backward after taking a step forward is not a disaster, it's a cha-cha."
- Robert Brault

Quote of the Day

"Is fat really the worst thing a human being can be?  Is fat worse than vindictive, jealous, shallow, vain, boring, evil, or cruel?  Not to me."
- J. K. Rowling

Quote of the Day

"This is what we call a red flag.  And it's the exact kind of red flag that most of us ignore in order to keep dating the 'lovely' person we are dating."
- The Hairpin (via)

Quote of the Day

"Art is both love and friendship, and understanding; the desire to give. It is not charity, which is the giving of Things, it is more than kindness which is the giving of self. It is both the taking and giving of beauty, the turning out to the light the inner folds of the awareness of the spirit. It is the recreation on another plane of the realities of the world; the tragic and wonderful realities of earth and men, and of all the inter-relations of these."
- Ansel Adams

Quote of the Day

"I prefer the retro chic of spending Christmas just like Mary and Joseph did —- traveling arduously back to the place of your birth to be counted, with no guarantee of a bed when you get there.  You may end up sleeping on an old wicker couch with a dog licking your face while an Ab Rocket infomercial plays in the background.  It’s a modern-day manger."
- Tina Fey

Quote of the Day

"...and you my child, will be called
the prophet of the Most High,
for you'll go before our God,
to prepare the way for the Promised One...
 Such is the tender mercy of our God,
who from on high
will bring the Rising Sun to visit us...
and to guide our feet
into the way of peace."
- Luke 1:76, 78-79

Quote of the Day

"Go to Smith?  She couldn't even spell it."
 - Bob Wallace, White Christmas

Winter Weekend 2010

Quote of the Day

"I feel like I have a hundred projects 'in the works' and I rarely give myself credit for them.  As if an idea has to be made tangible to feel accomplished.  We should pat ourselves on the back for brain power alone."
- Marta Dansie, "Introspection No. 5" (via)

Quote of the Day

"Wonder where I will end up tonight
Wonder where I will get stuck"
- Great Lake Swimmers, "Gonna Make It Through This Year"

Quote of the Day

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
- Terry Pratchett

Quote of the Day

"Aspire not to have more, but to be more."
- Oscar Romero

Quote of the Day

"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say, 'Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping.'  To this day, especially in times of disaster, I remember my mother's words, and I am always comforted by realizing that there are still so many helpers -- so many caring people in this world."
- Fred Rogers

Quote of the Day

“How often have I lain beneath rain on a strange roof, thinking of home.”
- William Faulkner

Quote of the Day

"Courage is what it takes to stand up and speak; courage is also what it takes to sit down and listen."
- Sir Winston Churchill

Quote of the Day

“Don't talk to strangers. Don't do drugs. Don't smoke. Don't drink and drive. Don't have sex. Wear a condom. Wear sunblock. Wear a seat belt. Wear a helmet. If you see something, say something. Just say no. Stop, drop, and roll. Stop, look, and listen. Look both ways before you cross the street...Safety is an illusion. Bad things can happen to anyone at any time, whether you follow the rules or not. You can check left, check right, check left again before you step off the curb and into the crosswalk, but that won't stop an anonymous asshole in his shitty pickup from putting you in intensive care...”
- Megan McCafferty

Quote of the Day

"The best way to spread Christmas cheer, 
is singing loud for all to hear."
- Buddy, Elf

Quote of the Day

"Thinking outrageously,
I write in cursive"
- Sufjan Stevens

Quote of the Day

"Your journey has molded you for your greater good, and it was exactly what it needed to be. Don't think that you've lost time. It took each and every situation you have encountered to bring you to the now. And now is right on time."
- Asha Tyson

Quote of the Day

“Pain insists upon being attended to. God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our consciences, but shouts in our pains. It is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”
- C.S. Lewis

Quote of the Day

"And now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good."
- John Steinbeck

Quote of the Day

"If someone breaks your heart just punch them in the face.  Seriously.  Punch them in the face and go get some ice cream."
- Frank Ocean

Quote of the Day

"We read to know that we are not alone."
- C.S. Lewis

Quote of the Day

"There's a thousand shades of white
and a thousand shades of black,
and the same rule always applies:
smile pretty and watch your back."
- Ani DiFranco, "Every State Line"

Quote of the Day

"I found a posting from my 'friend,' who I’m pretty sure I know only from Facebook and I’m not quite sure why.  But I like him a lot and I am pretty sure he is not a serial killer."
- Elizabeth Drescher (via)

Quote of the Day

"It's these little victories in the morning that make life worth living."
- JJ

Quote of the Day

"The Bible isn't really at all good at being an instruction manual.  It's good at leading us into a tangle of wild poetry, heartbreaking stories, contradictions, twists and turns, the concrete struggles of a vast array of unruly, disparate human beings being sought after by God...The Bible isn't a cage that contains God, making God available to take out or hang in our living room, it's a witness to the fecund, ungraspable Other, and our relationship to that Other."
- Debbie Blue

Quote of the Day

"Suffering is the price of being alive."
- Judy Collins

“It would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased.”
- C.S. Lewis, The Weight of Glory, and Other Addresses

"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

"My relationship with the schnoodles is so complicated."
- Ingrid 

Photo by Danielle

“Yes, the long war on Christianity. I pray that one day we may live in an America where Christians can worship freely! In broad daylight! Openly wearing the symbols of their religion... perhaps around their necks? And maybe -- dare I dream it? -- maybe one day there can be an openly Christian President. Or, perhaps, 44 of them. Consecutively.”
- Jon Stewart

"Blessed is she who believes."
- Luke 1:45

“[Marriage] happens as with cages: the birds without despair to get in, and those within despair of getting out.”
- Michel de Montaigne

"'Did you know that the average American spends six months of his or her life waiting for red lights to turn green? Six months wasted, waiting for permission to move on. Think of all the other stuff you could do with that time.'
I was totally confused. 'In the car?'
'In your life,' he said."
- Megan McCafferty

“The trouble is not that I am single and likely to stay single, but that I am lonely and likely to stay lonely.”
- Charlotte Brontë

"Once in a while it really hits people that they don't have to experience the world in the way they have been told to."
- Alan Keightley

"I ate a brownie once, at a party in college.  It was intense.  It was kind of indescribable actually.  I felt like I was floating.  Turns out there wasn't any pot in the brownie.  It was just an insanely good brownie."
- Leslie Knope, Parks and Recreation 2.02

"Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what.  If you don't listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won't tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff."
- Catherine Wallace

"We thought we lost you
Welcome back"
- The New Pornographers, "Adventures in Solitude"

"Sometimes when God closes a door...he breaks your heart."
- Leland Stottlemeyer, Monk 4.12

"When the Lord closes a door, somewhere he opens a window."
- Reverend Mother, The Sound of Music

"What a commentary on civilization, when being alone is being suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it -- like a secret vice."
- Anne Morrow Lindbergh

"What the world requires of the Christians is that they should continue to be Christians."
- Samuel Adams

"Librarians...possess a vast store of politeness.  These are people who get asked regularly the dumbest questions on God's green earth.  These people tolerate every kind of crank and eccentric and mouth-breather there is."
- Garrison Keillor

"These are my heart songs
They never feel wrong
And when I wake for goodness sake
These are the songs I keep singin'"
- Weezer, "Heart Songs"

"I told you eating something called 'stick of butter in a bun' was a bad idea!"
- Shawn, Psych 6.02 (see also)

"If I'm talking to a guy who's straight and cute and single, I'm like, 'Are you a unicorn?'"
- Margaret Cho

“The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or confusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not healing, not curing... that is a friend who cares.”
- Henri Nouwen

"Come night, come darkness, for you cannot come too soon or stay too long by such a place as this! Come, straggling lights into the windows of the ugly houses; and you who do iniquity therein, do it at least with this dread scene shut out!"
- Charles Dickens, Bleak House

"There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread."
- Mahatma Gandhi

"Reserve the right to have crappy ideas."
- Laura Simms

"Technically I'm a vegetarian, but lately I've been eating lard. It's like log cabin times."
- E.B.

“It’s incredible being given the opportunity to shatter glass ceilings but the more important focus is making sure we are creating a path many more will follow. I might not have aspired to public office if women and openly gay and lesbian candidates hadn’t run before me and shown me that doing so was possible. I recognized when I became the first woman elected to congress from the state of Wisconsin and first out lesbian elected in the history of U.S. that that’s not enough. We need to have legislative bodies that reflect America. Being a first is an extraordinary privilege, but the battle is won when there are many.”
-Tammy Baldwin (Smith '84)

"Look back, to slavery, to suffrage, to integration and one thing is clear. Fashions in bigotry come and go. The right thing lasts."
- Anna Quindlen

"To do then now would be retro. To do then then was very now-tro, if you will."
- Mark, A Mighty Wind

"Your dad hasn't changed his ways since he was six months old. For the first six months, I gave him the benefit of the doubt."
- C.E.

"Think well. Speak well. Do well. These three things, through the mercy of God, will make a man go to Heaven."
- St. Camillus de Lellis

"I'd like to single out some heroes, okay, like the nurses at NYU Hospital.  After the hospital generators failed, these nurses carried twenty newborns down nine flights of stairs while manually operating respirators."
- Stephen Colbert (see also)

"I have always imagined that paradise will be kind of a library."
- Jorges Luis Borges

"Werewolf bar mitzvah
Spooky scary
Boys becoming men
Men becoming wolves"

- Tracy Jordan, 30 Rock 2.02

"False history gets made all day, any day,
the truth of the new is never on the news
False history gets written every day..."
- Adrienne Rich, Turning the Wheel

"I am a big believer in 'Intelligent Design,' and by that I mean I love IKEA!"
- Tina Fey

"Language... has created the word 'loneliness' to express the pain of being alone. And it has created the word 'solitude' to express the glory of being alone."
- Paul Tillich

"For an hour and a half, I had hope. Isn't hope the worst?"
- Adrian Monk, Monk 4.6

"Don't mistake a clear view for a short distance."
- Grand Canyon hiking advice

“I've got a bad case of the 3:00 am guilts -- you know, when you lie in bed awake and replay all those things you didn't do right? Because, as we all know, nothing solves insomnia like a nice warm glass of regret, depression and self-loathing.”
- D.D. Barant

"I've learned that you shouldn't go through life with a catcher's mitt on both hands; you need to be able to throw something back."
- Maya Angelou

“Taking solitude in stride was a sign of strength and of a willingness to take care of myself. This meant--among other things--working productively, remembering to leave the house, and eating well...Cooking for others had often been my way of offering care. So why, when I was alone, did I find myself trying to subsist on cereal and water? I'd need to learn to cook for one.”
- Jenni Ferrari-Adler, Alone in the Kitchen with an Eggplant

"Solitude never hurt anyone. Emily Dickinson lived alone, and she wrote some of the most beautiful poetry the world has ever known... then went crazy as a loon."
- Lisa Simpson, The Simpsons

"My grief lies onward and my joy behind."
- William Shakespeare

“I think it's good for a person to spend time alone. It gives them an opportunity to discover who they are and to figure out why they are always alone.”
- Amy Sedaris, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence

"Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not."
- James Joyce, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

"I guess the important thing is to never stop searching."
J. D., Scrubs

"Sometimes it seems like to tell the truth today is to run the risk of being killed. But if I fall, I'll fall five feet four inches forward in the fight for freedom. I'm not backing off."
- Fannie Lou Hamer

"I'm not voting unless I get my own binder."
- Laura

(See also.)

"In order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did and why you no longer need to feel it."
- Mitch Albom

"When we have done our very best, we may still experience disappointments, but we will not be disappointed in ourselves."
- Julie Beck

"We make a living by what we get. We make a life by what we give."
- Winston Churchill

"So this is it? I sold my soul for this?
Washed my hands of God for this?
I miss my mom and dad for this?"
- Fun., "Some Nights"

"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."
- Cicero

"What a bitter end
I was on the mend"
- Meaghan Smith, "Heartbroken"

"Petrified and full of regret...the world of dating."
- Sharona, Monk 3.3

"And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don't believe in magic will never find it."
- Roald Dahl

"Do you remember the scars I showed you
The stories I told you
How I always said forever
When you asked me to stay true."
- Ane Brun, "Do You Remember"

"Embrace the current season of your life."
- Gabrielle Blair

“‘Ruined for life’ is not merely a measurement of the length of our ruination.  It refers more directly to the purpose of our ruination: LIFE.  Life over death; justice over injustice; peace over war; sanity over the insanity we often find ourselves in.  Holy insecurity over security.” 
- Father Jack Morris, SJ (recommended reading)

Photo by Claire (Spokane, June 2012)

"When you're smiling on me,
That is all I need
To put behind me all my worries
And life's complexities."
- Gotye, "In Your Light"

"It may be only a moment,
but the world just falls away,
And I forget myself and everything else
That depressed me yesterday.
And I can sing"
- Gotye, "In Your Light"

"I have loved the stars too fondly to be fearful of the night."
- Galileo Galilei

“Time stands still best in moments that look suspiciously like ordinary life.”
- Brian Andreas

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

"We cannot become what we want to be by remaining what we are."
- Max DePree

"The student has his Rome, his whole glowing Italy, within the four walls of his library. He has in his books the ruins of an antique world and the glories of a modern one."
- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Anyone can be cool, but awesome takes practice."
- Lorraine Peterson

"Always look at what you have left. Never look at what you have lost."
- Robert H. Schuller

"I said to the sun, tell me about the Big Bang. The sun said, 'It hurts to become.'"
- Andrea Gibson

"Nothing good happens after 2 a.m. Go home."
- Ted, How I Met Your Mother 1.18

"Remember that what you believe will depend very much on what you are."
- Noah Porter

"What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals."
- Goethe

"Though you have not seen him, you love him; and even though you do not see him now, you believe in him and are filled with an inexpressible and glorious joy."
- 1 Peter 1:8

"Too many guys think I'm a concept, or I complete them, or I'm gonna make them alive. But I'm just a f'ed-up girl who's looking for my own peace of mind; don't assign me yours."
- Clementine, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

"When a woman tells the truth, she is creating the possibility for more truth around her."
- Adrienne Rich

"When I hear somebody sigh, ‘Life is hard,’ I am always tempted to ask, ‘Compared to what?’"
- Sydney J. Harris

"One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay 'in kind' somewhere else in life."
- Anne Morrow Lindberg

"God will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”
- Revelation 21:4

"Personally, I thought that one could thank the Lord at a lower volume and perhaps with less self-congratulation."
- Piper Kerman, Orange is the New Black

"Photography, fortunately, to me has not only been a profession but also a contact between people -- to understand human nature and to record, if possible, the best in each individual."
- Nickolas Muray

"I always carry emergency s'more rations in my car."
- Leslie, Parks and Recreation 4.1

"History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again."
- Maya Angelou

"From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked."
- Luke 12:48

"People who love to eat are always the best people."
- Julia Child