"The biggest issue you face is your own mind (you’re not alone in this) and the stories it tells you about your perceived problems. But the problems themselves are not as big as you feel they are. It’s the narrative around them that is most oppressive. You’ve been listening to K-FUKT. Change the station." — Lena Dunham Lennyscope, September 2016
"When we would start complaining as kids, my dad would ask us: “Do you want to have a good time or do you want to have a bad time?” It’s a simple question, but it’s always felt profound to me, this idea that I could reframe reality. That having a good time was about deciding to, and that when things went badly, I didn’t have to go with them." — Steph Wright Oru Kayak, "Go Anyway"
"Be yourself, because everyone else is taken." — Oscar Wilde
"In Buddhism, we speak of all the various potential states of mind as seeds. ... We aren’t necessarily aware of these seeds, but they are there in the lower level of our consciousness. The seeds contain the potential for all the different emotions, thoughts, and perceptions we may have. If something triggers one of the seeds—for example if someone says something unkind that waters your seed of anger—the seed of anger will come up and manifest in the upper level of consciousness, our mind. ... If you allow anger to stay there for a long time, then the seed of anger will be strengthened in the lower level of consciousness. It will become more important and will arise more easily. If you get angry every day, your seed of anger will grow bigger and bigger, and it will be much more difficult for compassion to grow.
" — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Fight
"When life seems like a turbulent ocean, we have to remember we have an island of peace inside." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Walk
"Walking meditation is a way of waking up to the wonderful moment we are living in. ... if we’re awake, then we’ll see this is a wonderful moment that life has given us, the only moment in which life is available." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Walk
"The same is true when you drink a cup of tea: if you’re concentrated and you focus your attention on the cup of tea, then the cup of tea becomes a great joy. Mindfulness and concentration bring about pleasure and insight." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Walk
"We’re in such a rush, looking for happiness in one place and then another. We walk like sleepwalkers, without any enjoyment of what we are actually doing. We are walking, but in our minds we are already doing something else: planning, organizing, worrying. ... Every time we return our attention to our breath and our steps, it’s as if we wake up." — Thich Nhat Hanh How to Walk
"Comparison is the biggest thief of joy." — Unknown
"People love to blame a place for their own failures." — Jedidiah Jenkins To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret
"I think he was quiet because his thoughts were loud." — Jedidiah Jenkins To Shake the Sleeping Self: A Journey from Oregon to Patagonia, and a Quest for a Life with No Regret
"In 900 years of time and space, I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important." — 11th Doctor Doctor Who, "A Christmas Carol"
"Popular kids never grow up to be interesting and…interesting kids are never popular." — Lena Dunham Not That Kind of Girl
"We all change, when you think about it. We’re all different people all through our lives. And that’s okay, that’s good, you’ve got to keep moving, so long as you remember all the people that you used to be." — 11th Doctor Doctor Who, "The Time of the Doctor"
"The time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time." — Unknown
"Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren’t a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I actually was." — Cheryl Strayed Wild
"It turns out there is a difference between wanting to be something and wanting to become something. Wanting to be something indicates a hope that somehow you will be struck by lightning and suddenly be that thing you wanted to be. Wouldn’t it be nice if I were suddenly, somehow, more outgoing, more confident. Hoping to be something is passive, and passivity gets you nowhere. Being is a state, and becoming is a process. And to be, you must become. Becoming requires work. Becoming requires action. Becoming means deciding you’re going to achieve something and taking real quantifiable steps in that direction." — Carolyn Highland Out Here: Wisdom from the Wilderness
"Saying something is impossible is a great way to get out of having to try." — Carolyn Highland Out Here: Wisdom from the Wilderness
"It used to be, on many days, that I could close my eyes and sense myself being perfectly happy. It’s a worthy thing to ponder, but maybe being perfectly happy is not really the point. Maybe that is only some modern American dream of the point, while the truer measure of humanity is the distance we must travel in our lives, time and again, 'twixt two extremes of passion—joy and grief,' as Shakespeare put it. However much I’ve lost, what remains to me is that I can still speak to name the things I love." — Barbara Kingsolver Small Wonders
"I envision the future version of myself that has transcended a difficult moment, that has figured out a tricky situation, that has the answer to a burning question. I imagine her out there waiting for me, and it’s a sort of comfort. Future me has gotten through this. ...Sometimes I’d arrive at that place up in the distance and realize I was the future me I had been looking at." — Carolyn Highland Out Here: Wisdom from the Wilderness
