Quotes about Reflection

In a library, you can find small miracles and truth, and you might find something that will make you laugh so hard that you will get shushed, in the friendliest way. I have found sanctuary in libraries my whole life, and there is sanctuary there now, from the war, from the storms of our families and our own minds. Libraries are like mountains or meadows or creeks: sacred space. So this afternoon, I'll walk to the library.

Gratitude begins in our hearts and then dovetails into behavior. It almost always makes you willing to be of service, which is where the joy resides. It means that you are willing to stop being such a jerk. When you are aware of all that has been given to you, in your lifetime and the past few days, it is hard not to be humbled, and pleased to give back.

What's the difference between you and God? God never thinks he's you.

Whenever the world throws rose petals at you, which thrill and seduce the ego, beware.

Everything slows down when we listen and stop trying to fix the unfixable.

Don't underestimate this gift of finding a place in the writing world: if you really work at describing creatively on paper the truth as you understand it, as you have experienced it, with the people or material who are in you, who are asking that you help them get written, you will come to a secret feeling of honor.

I do not at all understand the mystery of grace—only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.

I know God enjoys hearing my take on how best we should all proceed, as I'm always full of useful advice. I'm sure God says either, Oh, I so love Annie's selfless and evolved thoughts, or else Jeez. What a head case.

Addicts and alcoholics will tell you that their recovery began when they woke up in pitiful and degraded enough shape to take Step Zero, which is: Ãƒ¢Ã¢'¬Ã…"This shit has got to stop.

Grief ends up giving you the two best things: softness and illumination.

The hard silence between frustrated people always feels cluttered. But holy silence is spacious and inviting. You can drink it down. We offer it to ourselves when we work, rest, meditate, bike, read. When we hike by ourselves, we hear a silence still pristine with crunching leaves and birdsong. Silence can be a system of peace, which is mercy, easily offered to a friend needing quiet, harder when the person is one's own annoying self.

In early sobriety I heard that if you have an idea after ten p.m., it is probably not a good idea—and this was before e-mail.