“It takes courage to grow up and turn out to be who you really are.”
~e.e. cummings

“Life shrinks or expands in proportion to one’s courage.”
~Anais Ninn, writer (1903-1977)

“Promise me you’ll always remember: You’re braver than you believe, and stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”
~Christopher Robin, to Winnie the Pooh

“Nobody told me how hard and lonely change is.”
~Joan Gilbertson

“Man cannot remake himself without suffering,
for he is both the marble and the sculptor.”
~Alexis Carrel

“There is nothing like returning to a place that
remains unchanged to find the ways in which
you yourself have altered.”
~Nelson Mandela, A Long Walk to Freedom

“Strange things have happened to me. But events did not flow toward a single momentous revelation, one blooming pyrotechnic end—Enlightenment!—;with chrysanthemum fireworks bursting in the night. No, it was a great jumble of facts, instead, with ghosts on top of angels, and dreams and serendipitous coincidences, intertwining with the normal everyday.”
~Sophy Burnham, “A Book of Angels”

“I have a feeling that fulfilling my potential will reeeeally cut into my sitting around time.”
~comedian Maria Bamford

“Like I said, things never work out exactly the way you planned.”
~From the final episode of The Wonder Years

I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be.
Douglas Adams
English humorist & science fiction novelist (1952 – 2001)

“I must learn to love the fool in me–the one who feels too much, talks too much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled, masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of my human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my Fool.”
~Theodore Isaac Rubin (American Writer and psychiatrist)

“I am not me anymore,
…at least I’m not the same me that I was.”
from the movie, The Motorcycle Diaries

“And so rock bottom became the foundation on which I rebuilt my life.” ~Harry Potter author, JK Rowling