"Sitting taught me how to pay attention without creating stories around what I saw...Everything is Zen when you see it clearly for what it is, rather than what you want it to be." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"I have to believe in complete healing. I have to surround myself with people who believe it, too. I have to see it and feel it and live it. I have to train my mind to heal my body...This is how it works: my mind transporting me back to a time when I was healthy, and, at the same time, ahead to when I will be again...I dream about walking. The setting and characters change, but the plot is always the same: I’m injured and on crutches and then, without thinking, I take one free step and then another...I no longer refer to my left leg as my broken leg: it’s my healing leg...Recovery isn’t something that will happen. It is happening...Healing isn’t a mysterious, passive process that’s happening to me, but one that I am creating." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"The flip side of freedom is avoidance, and for years we’d been sliding into fixed, unspoken assumptions and interpretations of who we were, separately and together: I was independent and strong (read, unloving and stubborn). He was steady and reliable (read, emotionally unavailable). We’d been storing up these stories about ourselves and each other for so long that we’d started to believe them, and, at the same time, we hated them. Hated them so fiercely it sometimes felt as though we hated each other...If I can channel compassion, I am not mad." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"It’s strange how we miss things the most just as they’re about to end." — Katie Arnold Brief Flashings in the Phenomenal World
"Hard as it might be to accept, trying to fix someone is deeply narcissistic behavior." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"'Asking for help isn’t giving up,' said the horse. 'It’s refusing to give up.'" — Charlie Mackesy The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
"The words that really matter in the wake of passing are the stories we tell of our loved ones. Stories fill up the space they leave behind and we can see their faces and hear their laugh and reach into something shapeless and touch them. So long as we tell stories, they can never really die." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"Words amidst tragedy rarely if ever touch the void of grief, let alone fill it. The need to speak is an attempt to bring something back...to undo something that can’t be undone. And platitudes aren’t all that comforting. Regardless, someone always says something like “At least they died doing what they loved.” The search for a silver lining, the stumbling to make sense of death, doesn’t make loss any less painful...Say what you can and mean what you say and when there are no more words just let the silence speak. For a moment, let the silence scream." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"There is little room for others when we’re consumed by ourselves." — Cory Richards The Color of Everything: A Journey to Quiet the Chaos Within
"Children are not things to be molded, but are people to be unfolded." — Jess Lair
"...how quickly our moment together had already become a memory." — James Campbell Braving It: A Father, a Daughter, and an Unforgettable Journey into the Alaskan Wild
"We are shaped and fashioned by what we love." — Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
"We are mirrors reflecting onto each other. The people we surround ourselves with shape us, and we shape those around us, too." — Brad Stulberg Outside Online, "Good Vibes Are Contagious"
"If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together." — African proverb
"People are linked, not ranked, with each other, with nature and with the universe." — Gloria Steinem
"I am growing increasingly aware that friendship is worth much more than success. Friends have remained and everything else is history." — Nejc Zaplotnik, translated by Mimi Marinsek Alpinist Magazine, Issue 74, "Nejc Zaplotnik, Mountain Poet", excerpted from "Pot"
"I am alone like an arrow in flight, but I remember the bow and the strong arm that pulled it." — Jim Reynolds
"It conjures up an image of two tiny fair-haired children's heads with great brown trusting eyes. In those eyes I can discern a trace of admiration. At the same time, I also discern a narrow, hidden, brand-new path that has just awoken yet is completely independent of me. A tiny path on which new personalities will be shaped. To these new personalities, their father represents only a temporary role model, which they will soon leave, free and independent, like I want to be myself." — Nejc Zaplotnik, translated by Mimi Marinsek Alpinist Magazine, Issue 74, "Nejc Zaplotnik, Mountain Poet", excerpted from "Pot"
"Grief is much like this: learning to hold joy and suffering, presence and absence, mourning and love, together, like the braided strands of a rope that still connects us as we move forward into an uncertain future." — Mailee Hung For the Love of Climbing, Episode 37, "The Arc"
"Anybody can be with you when you’re right, but only friends are with you when you mess up." — Gloria Steinem My Life on the Road
