Calista Martin

“Even if you have it all together you can’t know where you’re going to end up. There are too many forces, as deep and invisible as tides, that keep us bouncing into places where we never thought we’d wind up. Sometimes the best we can hope for is to be graceful and brave in the face of all of the changes that will surely come. It also helps to have a sense of humor about your own fate, to not think that you alone are blessed when good fortune comes your way, or cursed when it passes you by. It helps if you can realize that this part of life when you don’t know what’s coming next is often the part that people look back on with the greatest affection.”
― Ann Patchett, What Now?

“William James said, “The best use of life is to spend it for something that outlasts it.”
― Rick Warren, The Purpose Driven Life: What on Earth Am I Here For?

“That’s one of the problems I think a lot of people have,” he continued. “They associate their misery to the fact that they’re in prison, and it’s not that. I think a lot of my misery was me hating me, and hating me made me hate everyone else. I felt like such a punk, I felt so weak. I really was a coward. I never stood up for myself. I mean, I stood up for myself as we associate standing up for yourself—fighting and violence. But that’s not standing up for yourself. I mean standing up for myself like thinking for myself. Now, I feel more okay with myself. I’m feeling stronger in my abilities every day, and the world just opens up. You really can do anything, you can shape your life any way you want it to be. Because prison isn’t the great prison. Prison is being entrapped by those self-destructive ways of thinking.”
― Laura Bates, Shakespeare Saved My Life: Ten Years in Solitary with the Bard

“Holding and synthesizing information in your brain creates your personality. You’re surrendering your personality to an electronic device in your pocket.”
― Barbara Kingsolver, Unsheltered