“Looking back now, I would say that this was one of the first valuable lessons I learned, and one that would be useful in my future line of work. Sometimes things go wrong. It is inevitable. But it is a mistake to waste time and energy worrying about events that you cannot influence. Once they have happened, let them go.”
“You can’t help who you fall in love with.”
“We define love the way we experienced it.”
“Odd as it may seem, I am my remembering self, and the experiencing self, who does my living, is like a stranger to me.”
“Basic personality traits develop early in life and over time become inviolable, hardwired. Most people learn little from experience, rarely thinking of adjusting their behavior, see problems as emanating from those around them, and keep on doing what they do in spite of everything, for better or worse.”
“If everyone waited to become an expert before starting, no one would become an expert. To become an EXPERT, you must have EXPERIENCE. To get EXPERIENCE, you must EXPERIMENT! Stop waiting. Start stuff.”
“Peace is the way, not the destination.”
“Reality lies in the greatest enchantment you have ever experienced.”
“...you got tuh go there tuh know there.”
“We Were young. He didn t love me. He just thought he did. Simple as that.- Blaire Lynn”
“Experience was of no ethical value. It was merely the name men gave to their mistakes.”
“Those who have not lived in New Orleans have missed an incredible, glorious, vital city--a place with an energy unlike anywhere else in the world, a majority-African American city where resistance to white supremacy has cultivated and supported a generous, subversive, and unique culture of vivid beauty. From jazz, blues, and and hip-hop to secondlines, Mardi Gras Indians, jazz funerals, and the citywide tradition of red beans and rice on Monday nights, New Orleans is a place of art and music and food and traditions and sexuality and liberation.”
“The intense thereness of it-haecceity Sax had called it once, when John had asked him something about his religious beliefs-I believe in haecceity, Sax had said, in thisness, in here-and-nowness, in the particular individuality of every moment. That s why I want to know what is this? what is this? what is this? Now, remembering Sax s odd word and his odd religion, John finally understood him; because he was feeling the thisness of the moment like a rock in his hand, and it felt as if his entire life had been lived only to get him to this moment.”
“Explore, experience, evolve, and exceed your expectations! - No Excuses!”
“The temptation is to make an idol of our own experience, to assume our pain is more singular than it is. Experience means nothing if it does not mean beyond itself: we mean nothing unless and until our hard-won meanings are internalized and catalyzed within the lives of others. There is something I am meant to see, something for which my own situation and suffering are the lens, but the cost of such seeing—I am just beginning to realize—may very well be any final clarity or perspective on my own life, my own faith. That would not be a bad fate, to burn up like the booster engine that falls away from the throttling rocket, lighting a little dark as I go.”
“The dance of love has different themes and moods, just like every relationship has its highs and lows. Enjoy the high moments and hang-on during the downtimes. The diverse range of emotions is the experience that builds you two. Your ability to perfectly switch between these moments and make the best out of the one you find yourself per time, proves that you are not only involved in the relationship like the chicken is in the business of making eggs but also very committed to it like the pig is in the business of making bacon.”
“We must do business in great waters; we must be really on the deck in a storm, if we would see the works of the Lord and His wonders in the deep. We must have stood side by side with King David; we must have gone down into the pit to slay the lion or have lifted up the spear against the eight hundred, if we would know the saving strength of God s right hand. Conflicts bring experience, and experience brings that growth in grace which is not to be attained by any other means.”