Ryan Jolicoeur

“It took many years of vomiting up all the filth I’d been taught about myself, and half-believed, before I was able to walk on the earth as though I had a right to be here.”
― James Baldwin, Collected Essays: Notes of a Native Son / Nobody Knows My Name / The Fire Next Time / No Name in the Street / The Devil Finds Work / Other Essays

“Nothing great is produced suddenly, since not even the grape or fig is. If you say to me now that you want a fig, I will answer you that it requires time: let it flower first, then put forth fruit, and then ripen. Is then the fruit of or a fig-tree not perfected suddenly and in one hour, and would you possess the fruit of a man's mind in so short a time and so easily? Do not expect it, even if I tell you”
― Epictetus, Discourses of Epictetus with the Encheiridion and Fragments

“Whoever makes his journey to a tyrant’s court Becomes his slave, although he went there a free man.”
― Anthony Everitt, Augustus: The Life of Rome's First Emperor

“What's going on in our world today is not something we can run away from. Therefore the calmest place is the eye of the storm. (...)

Chaos may be swirling all around us but if we stay in the center, obviously also metaphorically the centre of our own Being, that's where we're going to be able to handle everything that's going on, no matter how chaotic it gets. (...)

In the eye of the storm we're not tossed about by what we see.”
― Darryl Anka