Shauna Waters

“The Dream Keeper

Bring me all of your dreams,
You dreamer,
Bring me all your
Heart melodies
That I may wrap them
In a blue cloud-cloth
Away from the too-rough fingers
Of the world.”
― Langston Hughes, The Dream Keeper and Other Poems

“Recent breakthroughs in the field of neuro-science have shown that playing the piano is good for your brain. Dr. Gottfried Schlaug of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School spoke in 2009 at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., on the brain’s “plasticity”—its capacity to change—and announced that even nine- to eleven-year-old musicians show more brain activity than nonmusicians when performing tasks that require high levels of perceptual discrimination. Playing the piano, it turns out, is especially effective in enhancing skills in such important areas as pattern recognition and memory. To your health!”
― Stuart Isacoff, A Natural History of the Piano: The Instrument, the Music, the Musicians--from Mozart to Modern Jazz and Everything in Between

“Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.”
― Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre

“We still hadn’t learned, though, that growing up is all about getting hurt. And then getting over it. You hurt. You recover. You move on. Odds are pretty good you’re just going to get hurt again. But each time, you learn something. Each time, you come out of it a little stronger, and at some point you realize that there are more flavors of pain than coffee.”
― Jim Butcher, White Night