Nancy Oden

“The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life. If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness. Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. But what about the benefits of living harmoniously among extremes? What if you could somehow create an expansive enough life that you could synchronize seemingly incongruous opposites into a worldview that excludes nothing?”
― Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

“You can go through life and make new friends every year - every month practically - but there was never any substitute for those friendships of childhood that survive into adult years. Those are the ones in which we are bound to one another with hoops of steel.”
― Alexander McCall Smith, The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency

“Wishing to be friends is quick work, but friendship is a slow ripening fruit.”
― Aristotle

“I regret that it takes a life to learn how to live.”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close