I guess I'm still more at ease with the idea that I can be consumed than I am with the idea that I should be understood.

Don't do what you know on a gut level to be the wrong thing to do. Don't stay when you know you should go or go when you know you should stay. Don't fight when you should hold steady or hold steady when you should fight. Don't focus on the short-term fun instead of the long-term fallout. Don't surrender all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.

"Don't be strategic or coy. Strategic and coy are for jackasses. Be brave. Be authentic. Practice saying the word 'love' to the people you love so when it matters the most to say it, you will."

"Attention is the first and final act of love...The ultimate dwindling resource in the human arrangement isn't cheap oil or potable water or even common sense, but mercy."

Our problems become our story, and we can all get stuck in our stories. Deciding which problems to work on may be one of the most important decisions you make, becaus people can lose years (or a lifetime) working on the wrong problem.

The first thing I remember about the day I woke from my coma is something about a sunrise. I've been fascinated with them for most of my life. Not enough to wake up early to enjoy them, but on those few occasions when I have, I've been reminded what a miracle it is that they happen every day, regardless of the one before.

Ain't wise for a man with shallow secrets to drink deep.

I played the part, which is all manly games ever is.

To know the Word by the voice of your mother, that has always been the path to salvation.

"How come we don't go to church? Huh, Pa? Everybody go to church...We got something against church? Or is it the Lord we got issue with?"

Pa's eyes found mine. "We got issue with men. There's a shortage of answers in this world. It's the fool who thinks he got them."

"I have this hunch that everything was supposed to be more beautiful than this."

"Traveling alone, you get to be whoever you want. I don't mean lie. I mean you get to be a blank slate...You can leave your story behind. If you've broken hearts, the new place doesn't know. If you've lost trust in people and yourself, the new place doesn't know...Feeling like your family and the expectations and the traditions and judgements are absent...it can fill your veins with possibility and fire."

God's favorite lesson is humility.

The way women feel that they are not so much well-meaning human beings doing the best that they can but, instead, and endless list of problems (fat, hairy, unfashionable, spotty, smelly, tired, unsexy, & with a dodgy pelvic floor, to boot) to be solved. And that, with the application of a great deal of time & money...we might, one day, 20 yrs into the future, finally be able to put our feet up & say, "For nine minutes today, I almost *nailed* it!"

I'm still just a chimp in a frock with a laptop, setting fire to saucepans, falling down staircases, saying the wrong thing, and feeling like an insecure child inside.

The relief of taking off a bad bra is immeasurable. It's like a combination of putting your feet up, going to the bathroom, having a drink of cold water on a hot day, and sitting on the steps of a trailer having a smoke.

If there is to be a fifth wave of feminism, I would hope that the main thing that distinguishes it from all that came before is that women counter the awkwardness, disconnect, and bullshit of being a modern woman not by shouting at it, internalizing it, or squabbling about it - but by simply pointing at it and going "HA!" instead

insomnia has this romantic way of making the moon feel like perfect company.

i wouldn't say i'm sensitive, i would say i'm highly susceptible to feeling a lot, and "sometimes there just ain't enough rocks." Forrest Gump. when i say my feelings are a box of chocolates, i mean i like to eat them.

People who suffer the most from a given state of affairs are paradoxically the least likely to question, challenge, reject, or change it.

I guess some things can't be explained, only forgiven or not.

Unworthy boys make a lot of noise.

"You all listen now, this is a real lesson in life. Yes, we got stuck, but what'd we girls do? We made it fun, we laughed. That's what sisters and girlfriends are all about. Sticking together even in the mud, 'specially in mud."

"This little piggy stayed home."

Saturday night in your 30s

The skill I learned was a crucial one, the patience to read things I could not yet understand.

She stopped wearing makeup, then she stopped apologizing for not wearing it.

I had been educated in the rhythms of the mountain, rhythms in which change was never fundamental, only cyclical...Our lives were a cycle - the cycle of the day, the cycle of the seasons - circles of perpetual change that, when complete, meant nothing had changed at all. I believed my family was a part of this immortal pattern, that we were, in some sense, eternal. But eternity belonged only to the mountain.

Karen's Step-by-Step Guide on How to be a Latchkey Kid is the realest shit I've ever read. 🙌🏼

No one is nicer than Mexicans. When your food's that good, you're nicer. 🌮

Knowledge alone is like an unearned memory, mostly forgotten. Just facts and two-dimensional images. I wanted to physically discover the world, the old-fashioned way.

The life before had happened to me as childhood happens to everyone. The mark of adulthood is when we happen to life. Thirty years old. I was now an adult, with or without my consent, and adults are responsible for their lives. I wasn't going to become someone I didn't choose to be.

Do what u love, but stay on the assembly line. There's no time to find what u love, u should be building ur credit score. Take risks, but don't be foolish. Believe in urself, but only if u've proven u should. Haven't u seen those idiots auditioning on American Idol, thinking they can sing? Don't be one of them. Don't embarrass urself. Don't waste time at a job u hate, but magically manifest money to leave that job & chase a dream. Got it? Perfect.

Thought I was ready for fall, but now I just want to fence in our porch and drink sweet tea til the cows come home... #southernliving #sweettea #suntea #allthetea