"I wanted to become the seeker, the aroused and passionate explorer, and it was better to go at it knowing nothing at all, always choosing the unmarked bottle, always choosing your own unproven method, armed with nothing but faith and a belief in astonishment."

"It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our lives that we must draw our strength to live and our reasons for living."

"At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person. Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude of those who have lighted the flame within us."

"While we may judge things as good or bad, karma doesn't. It's a simple case of like gets like, the ultimate balancing act, nothing more, nothing less. And if you're deteremined to fix every situation you deem as bad, or difficult, or somehow unsavory, then you rob the person of their own chance to fix it, learn from it, or even grow from it. Some things, no matter how painful, happen for a reason. A reason you or I may not be able to grasp at first sight, not without knowing a person's entire life story—their cumulative past. And to just barge in and interfere, no matter how well-intentioned, would be akin to robbing them of their journey. Something that's better not done."

"Do you not then hear this horrible scream all around you that people usually call silence."

"Criticism - however valid or intellectually engaging - tends to get in the way of a writer who has anything personal to say. A tightrope walker may require practice, but if he starts a theory of equilibrium he will lose grace (and probably fall off)."

"When the world pushes you to your knees, you're in the perfect position to pray"

"Whoever you are, or whatever it is that you do, when you really want something, it's because that desire originated in the soul of the universe. It's your mission on earth."

"The ground's generosity takes in our compost and grows beauty! Try to be more like the ground."

"And...I think that's what life is all about, actually,about children and flowers."

"The first thing you have to know about writing is that it is something you must do everyday. There are two reasons for this rule: Getting the work done and connecting with your unconscious mind."

"I am buoyant and expansive and uncontainable--but I always was so, only I never knew it!"

"I have a dream.” “Is your dream very big?” “No.” “Well is it very grand?” “Not either.” “Neither?” “Neither.” “What is it then?” “It is very shiny."

"Hope springs forever."

"There is no illusion greater than fear."

"It is books that are a key to the wide world; if you can't do anything else, read all that you can."

"Dreams are shores where the ocean of spirit meets the land of matter. Dreams are beaches where the yet-to-be, the once-were, the will-never-be may walk awhile with the still are."

"My young sisters, we have such hope for you. We have such great expectations for you. Don't settle for less than what the Lord wants you to be...Give me a young woman who loves home and family, who reads and ponders the scriptures daily, who has a burning testimony of the Book of Mormon... Give me a young woman who is virtuous and who has maintained her personal purity, who will not settle for less than a temple marriage, and I will give you a young woman who will perform miracles for the Lord now and throughout eternity."

"Therefore I would ask you to write all kinds of books, hesitating at no subject however trivial or however vast. By hook or by crook, I hope that you will possess yourselves of money enough to travel and to idle, to contemplate the future or the past of the world, to dream over books and loiter at street corners and let the line of thought dip deep into the stream."

"A good plan violently executed now is better than a perfect plan executed at some indefinite time in the future."

"We are what we are, neither a good or as bad as others paint us. And what we are doesn't change how truly we feel, only how free we are to follow those feelings."

"[T]he race is long - to finish first, first you must finish."