"Children laugh an average of three hundred or more times a day; adults laugh an average of five times a day. We have a lot of catching up to do."
"I once heard a sober alcoholic say that drinking never made him happy, but it made him feel like he was going to be happy in about fifteen minutes. That was exactly it, and I couldn't understand why the happiness never came, couldn't see the flaw in my thinking, couldn't see that alcohol kept me trapped in a world of illusion, procrastination, paralysis. I lived always in the future, never in the present. Next time, next time! Next time I drank it would be different, next time it would make me feel good again."
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Source: Heather King (2006). “Parched”, p.100, Penguin
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"Life would be vanilla ice cream without 31 flavors of individuality."
"I didn’t want to hear that people lived happily ever after. I wanted to know that other people suffered, too."
"Christ-as always, the model-never sat back, crossed his arms, and dismissed the annoying, the troublesome, or the unpromising. He never name-called, never judged, never treated a single person with contempt. Christ talked to everybody, he mingled with everybody, he shared his message with everybody, and he also loved everybody. So don't count the cost with anybody either. We don't waste our time with people who don't want what we have to offer. But if they do, one form of martyrdom is to give a listening ear or an understanding smile to all comers."
"Prayer is like practicing the piano or ballet or writing: you have to bring your body for a very long time, in spite of your body’s frailties and conflicts and general revolt, and then one day your body is not separate any more. You’ve in a sense become the piano or the dance or the word or the prayer. The prayer is in your heart. The prayer is your heart."
"Know that every mother occasionally feels "at the end of her rope." When you reach the end of your rope, don't add guilt to your frustration. No one said motherhood was going to be easy."