Very nice," said Rick after a while. "Very nice," he repeated, with more emphasis the second time. "What is?" I asked, turning to him, though I knew. "Everything," he said. And it was true.

Trusting yourself means living out what you already know to be true.

I cried and I cried and I cried. I wasn't crying because I was happy. I wasn't crying because I was sad. I wasn't crying because of my mother or my father or Paul. I was crying because I was full...I didn't feel like a big fate idiot anymore. And I didn't feel like a hard-ass motherfucking Amazonian queen. I felt fierce and humble and gathered up inside, like I was safe in this world too.

...but thinking about it didn't do a thing. Thinking about it was a long dive into a bucket of shit that didn't have a bottom.

It isn't enough to have had an interesting or hilarious or tragic life. Art isn't anecdote. It's the consciousness we bring to bear on our lives. For what happened in the story to transcend the limits of the personal, it must be driven by the engine of what the story means.

It’s hard to go. It’s scary and lonely…and half the time you’ll be wondering why the hell you’re in Cincinnati or Austin or North Dakota or Mongolia or wherever your melodious little finger-plucking heinie takes you. There will be boondoggles and discombobulated days, freaked-out nights and metaphorical flat tires.But it will be soul-smashingly beautiful… It will open up your life.

Transformation isn't a butterfly. It's the thing before you get to be a pretty bug flying away. It's huddling in the dark cocoon and then pushing your way out. It's the messy work of making sense of your fortunes and misfortunes, desires and doubts, hang-ups and sorrows, actions and accidents, mistakes and successes, so you can go on and become the person you must next become.

Self-confidence means living out what you already know to be true.

It was only when I rounded a bend and glimpsed the white peaks ahead that I doubled my abilities, only when I thought how far i had yet to go that i lost faith that I would get there