inspiration for the heart

Love at first sight is easy to understand; it's when two people have been looking at each other for a lifetime that it becomes a miracle.

--Amy Bloom, best-selling author, psychotherapist, and educator

Life gives us what we need when we need it. Receiving what it gives us is a whole other thing.

--Pam Houston, author and teacher

It is not in the still calm of life, or the repose of a pacific station, that great characters are formed... The habits of a vigorous mind are formed in contending with difficulties. All history will convince you of this, and that wisdom and penetration are the fruit of experience, not the lessons of retirement and leisure. Great necessities call our great virtues.

--Abigail Adams, first lady (1797-1801)

"I wanted a perfect ending.  Now I've learned, the hard way, that some poems don't rhyme, and some stories don't have a clear beginning, middle, and end.  Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what's going to happen next."

--Gilda Radner

Happiness is a conscious choice, not an automatic response.

--Mildred Barthel, poet