I have been obsessed with quotes since college, when I started collecting them in a leather journal that I still read and that still moves me when I do. Here are some inspiring me lately:

“Time alone, simply to be, and to be oneself, is its own kind of joy. Then, when we spend time with friends, we do so not because we need to, but because we want to. A moment in good company is free of straining dependently on the future for value. The moment — each moment, a lifetime of moments — is wonderful in the present.” Noah Lawrence

“Eating is one of the only socially acceptable ways we can share vulnerabilities. We would never get together with strangers and use the bathroom together, but it might have the same affect. No sense putting on airs, we’re just human. So here we are, a group of people putting foods in our mouths because if we don’t eat, we die, because we are not superhuman, we are beholden to our bodies, and our bodies need food and so much more. So I think there’s a humbling aspect to eating together. And then, seated there at the table, we are even. Nobody is taller, nobody is dominating, we are eye to eye. And we have to take our time, because we are also eating, and we have to listen, less we spit soup out of our mouths for talking all the time. And it’s such a pleasurable experience too, that feeling of comfort that we are going to stay alive another few days, that we are secure.” Donald Miller

“It was good … to be reminded that everyone … is a dreaming, willing, stumbling human being out of reverence for whom it would be an honor to shine my shoes.” Bryce Taylor

“I mean really trusting seems to come with a willingness to toss over my shoulder the very things I hold closest to my chest. And there isn’t a guarantee that the outcome will be as good as what Digory walked away with in hand. If anything, the only promise is that the good I had in mind isn’t the best.” Kendall Ruth

“I have learned to quit speeding through life, always trying to do too many things too quickly, without taking the time to enjoy each day’s doings. I think I always thought of real living as being high. I don’t mean on drugs – I mean real living was falling in love, or when I got my first job, or when I was able to help somebody, . . . In between the highs I was impatient – you know how it is – life seemed so Daily. Now I love the dailiness. I enjoy washing dishes, I enjoy cooking, I see my father’s roses out the kitchen window. I like picking beans. I notice everything – birdsongs, the clouds, the sound of wind, the glory of sunshine after two weeks of rain.” Olive Ann Burns

“The only opportunity you will ever have to live by faith is in the circumstances you are provided this very day: this house you live in, this family you find yourself in, this job you have been given, the weather conditions that prevail at the …moment.” Eugene Peterson, Run with the Horses