Gia > Gia's Quotes

“You don't always have to chop with the sword of truth. You can point with it too.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“Unfinished Poem
I would love to live like a river flows, carried by the surprise of its own unfolding.”
― John O'Donohue

“But tonight, the lion of contentment has placed a warm heavy paw on my chest. ”
― Billy Collins

“We are uncomfortable because everything in our life keeps changing -- our inner moods, our bodies, our work, the people we love, the world we live in. We can't hold on to anything -- a beautiful sunset, a sweet taste, an intimate moment with a lover, our very existence as the body/mind we call self -- because all things come and go. Lacking any permanent satisfaction, we continuously need another injection of fuel, stimulation, reassurance from loved ones, medicine, exercise, and meditation. We are continually driven to become something more, to experience something else.”
― Tara Brach, Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life With the Heart of a Buddha

“If we learn to open our hearts, anyone, including the people who drive us crazy, can be our teacher.”
― Pema Chodron

“We think that the point is to pass the test or to overcome the problem, but the truth is that things don't really get solved. They come together and they fall apart.”
― Pema Chodron

“Rage — whether in reaction to social injustice, or to our leaders’ insanity, or to those who threaten or harm us — is a powerful energy that, with diligent practice, can be transformed into fierce compassion.”
― Bonnie Myotai Treace

“Forgiveness is giving up all hope of having had a better past.”
― Anne Lamott

“I do not understand the mystery of grace -- only that it meets us where we are and does not leave us where it found us.”
― Anne Lamott

“E.L. Doctorow said once said that 'Writing a novel is like driving a car at night. You can see only as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.' You don't have to see where you're going, you don't have to see your destination or everything you will pass along the way. You just have to see two or three feet ahead of you. This is right up there with the best advice on writing, or life, I have ever heard.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
― Alan Wilson Watts, The Culture of Counter-Culture: Edited Transcripts

“Muddy water is best cleared by leaving it alone.”
― Alan Watts