“I stopped feeling bad about the prospect of letting myself down. I welcomed a future in which I failed.”— Katie Heaney, tinyletter.com
“But you don’t know what you can do until you try it. And trying is the reason you’re here.”— Maria Dahvana Headley, twitter.com
“The first yes, though, is the one you tell yourself. That one’s huge. It’s when you say, I will do this anyway. I will do it because it matters to me to make this attempt at the summit. You will not be perfect. No one is perfect. It will be hard. Everything is hard.”— Maria Dahvana Headley, twitter.com
“This is just slow build and big ambition, and some luck. Not everyone gets everything they want. I don’t have everything I want. But when something goes right, even in the wrong direction, I try to celebrate that shit.”— Maria Dahvana Headley, twitter.com
“You can do it. You can be completely daunted and scared, and still, if you do the work to learn how to write, and do the work of writing, you can make stories people will read. You can change myths people think they’ve committed to memory. You can rock this place.”— Maria Dahvana Headley, twitter.com
“People will tell you things about the world, ways in which they think you might fail. Some of the things they tell you might be right. Failure can be survived. Keep making a list of your best version, and keep ticking items off. Keep learning. Write your world.”— Maria Dahvana Headley, twitter.com
“You can make yourself into the person you wish you were. It takes work and small steps and brave goals. Set those brave impossible goals. Tell yourself you are on the right path. Don’t die today. Live. Stay alive. Keep pushing yourself into your best case.”— Maria Dahvana Headley, twitter.com
“All this is to say: it is not to late to show up for your life. You can be an activist and revolutionary and writer all at once. You can have love. You can give the world the most you have in you. You can start now.”— Maria Dahvana Headley, twitter.com
“Either choice is so much more freeing than which choice, and it might even be more honest. Your path is just your path.”— Haley Nahman, manrepeller.com
“When you get discouraged with the smaller picture, look to the larger. When you get discouraged with the larger picture, look to the smaller. Don’t quit. Just shift to a different ministry angle. In a culture yelling the bigger the better, I’m finding life again in looking small.”— Beth Moore, twitter.com
“Accept your own story. Reject your past’s hold on your future but do yourself a favor: accept your past. Take it to the hill. Stand with it laid bare in the shadow of the cross. Believe God. Receive grace. Surrender self-hatred. Simply live as 1 to whom His grace was not in vain.”— Beth Moore, twitter.com
“Life is hard for the living, but damn, it's good to be alive and changing and working. The only way to keep doing that is to keep feeding yourself, and keep treating yourself like someone who matters. You matter. Be kind.”— Maria Dahvana Headley, twitter.com
“We all get rejected. We all get left out of cool projects. We all get ignored. We also torture ourselves wondering about the circumstances of rejection or exclusion. But... The spotlight can't always be on us. Part of being a pro is figuring out how to not take that personally.”— Scott Lynch, twitter.com
“You don't have to be famous to be a role model. Identify issues you're passionate about, like climate change or income inequality. Seek out your own role models, like a teacher or a family friend. Then, take a deep breath and get to work.”— Kamala Harris, twitter.com
“Every day has the potential to be the best day ever. Make today count.”— Mandy Gonzalez, twitter.com
“Each and everyone of us is a being of limited duration: all of us eventually go down to defeat. But as Earnest Hemingway saw so clearly, the ultimate value of our lives is decided not by how we win but by how we lose.”— Haruki Murakami, amazon.com