“We are invested in being together. In having friends. In joining our lives. And yet these are the people who also fail you. And when they fail you in these ways, it signals a larger understanding about who you are as a black person in the world. It's not just a little failure for me. Its something exposed.” PeopleWorldWayLittlesPersonsTogetherUnderstandingBlackOur LivesFailingWho You AreExposedSignalsJoiningBeing TogetherBlack Person Author:Claudia Rankine
“This is the age of fear and so many of us feel afraid to speak out about what has happened to our lives in the wake of 9/11. Television promotes the world as a scary place for the United States and this justifies peeling away every element of privacy we had before. The media is monopolized so we don't even hear a lot of dissent about this new era.” WorldFeelsStatesAgeSpeakUnitedUnited StatesOur LivesHappenedMediaTelevisionElementsScaryErasPrivacyJustifyDissentSpeaks OutNew EraPeeling Author:Sandra Cisneros
“As Indigenous peoples, we know there is more to the world. We know spirits exist. We know as women, because we're especially attuned to this kind of knowledge, that spirits exist and have a presence in our lives. Some of us are gifted and can communicate with the spirit world. Not everyone has that gift and can perceive the borders between the living and the dead and our society actively discourages us of exploring the knowledge of what many of us have already always known in our cultures.” KnowsWorldKindSpiritCultureKnownOur LivesCommunicatePerceiveBordersOur SocietyGiftedExploringIndigenousDiscouragingIndigenous PeopleSpirit World Author:Sandra Cisneros
“The world comes to us in fragments and shards. Whatever stories we shape from our days, we're always dealing with gaps, blank-spots, and blackouts - and in handling all these breakages, we are, at all times, so incredibly intimate with sharp edges, the unending knife-like moments of failure and joy in our lives.” WorldMomentsStoriesJoyOur LivesShapesEdgesSpotsAll TimeIntimateGapsKnivesBlankFragmentsUnendingBlackoutsSharp Edges Author:Alex Lemon
“Love is at once the most creative and yet simultaneously destructive force in the world, and thus, in our lives. And I don't mean the Hallmark sentimental type of love, although that is part of it. But a deeper obligation that we have to each other: the obligation to reflect our humanness at each other, to reflect back the things others show us and we, them.” WorldMeanShowsForceLove IsCreativeOur LivesTypeDeeperObligationDestructiveSentimentalHallmarkHumannessTypes Of Love Author:Chris Abani
“Don't confuse acceptance with being a naïve or weak person. Acceptance does not mean condoning negative behavior, staying in a bad situation, or not working to improve our life and the world.” WorldMeanPersonsDoeSituationOur LivesAcceptanceBehaviorNegativeWeakStayingBad SituationsNegative Behavior Author:Lee L Jampolsky
“I think we had to push forward to make sure it was different, do something that we had never done before and yet still have the consistency to stay in the same world. This was our chance to do all the things we didn't get a chance to do before. We've been working on these movies [Kung Fu Panda] for twelve years and we have to keep things exciting for us in order for us to devote that many years of our lives to do this.” ThinkingWorldYearsStillsDifferentDoneOrderChanceOur LivesExcitingTwelveConsistencyKung FuPandasKung Fu Panda Author:Jennifer Yuh Nelson
“I have always felt that books help me feel less alone in the world. They make our lives bigger - they help us to feel feelings we wouldn't otherwise feel and to understand feelings that we don't have a framework for.” WorldFeelsBookHelpingFeelingsFeltOur LivesBiggerHelp MeFramework Author:Lisa Lucas
“To me, a mark of maturity is realizing that nobody runs the world. Fat cat politicians and secret conspiracies don't control our lives. In reality, the world is much more complex than that.” WorldRealityRunningRealizingSecretOur LivesPoliticianCatMarkComplexesFatsMaturityConspiracy Author:George Meyer
“Ultimately, I believe - because energy is so central to our lives - that a common global project to rewire the world with clean energy could be the first step on a path to global peace and global democracy - even in today's deeply troubled world.” WorldFirstsBelieveTodayEnergyI BelieveCommonStepsDemocracyPathOur LivesProjectsCleanFirst StepsRenewable EnergyClean EnergyGlobal Peace Author:Ross Gelbspan
“We waste a lot of our lives sometimes. There are people sitting across from us who would make the whole world better if we spent more time with them in it, but we can't get across that gully.” PeopleIfsWorldSometimesWholeOur LivesWasteSittingWhole WorldMore Time Author:Adam Duritz
“A little exposure to the philosophy of many Eastern spiritual traditions - including yoga - could easily lead you to conclude that if you aspire to achieve goals in the material world you cannot fulfill yourself spiritually, or vice versa. However, since all of us, at some level, long for fulfillment in all aspects of our life, it is essential to understand that these two aims are not mutually exclusive.” IfsWorldLittlesLongTwoPhilosophySpiritualGoalLevelsOur LivesAchieveMaterialsEssentialsYogaAspectTraditionAimIncludingVicesFulfillmentAspireEasternExposureExclusiveVice VersaMaterial WorldAchieving Goals Author:Rod Stryker
“I am continually trying to find meaning in the world. If we cannot find some ultimate significance or value in our lives, we fall very easily into despair.” IfsWorldTryingValuesFallOur LivesDespairUltimateSignificanceFind Me Author:Karen Armstrong
“We all inhabit our lives, in different ways to some degree. We see ourselves a certain way, and based on how we see ourselves, that's how we see the world.” WorldWayDifferentCertainOur LivesDegreesDifferent Ways Author:Krishna Das
“The whole reason I make these pictures is for those moments of clarity. For that single moment, everything seems to make sense in my world. And I think we all look for that in our lives, because our lives are generally filled with chaos and confusion and disorder and complication.” ThinkingWorldLooksReasonWholeMomentsSeemsOur LivesFilledChaosConfusionClarityMake SenseDisorderSingle MomComplicationMoments Of ClarityChaos And Confusion Author:Gregory Crewdson
“In Lords of Rainbow I start out by taking away color from the world, and in the process show color's vital place in our lives. At least I hope that by the end of the book it's a portion of what the reader comes away with - a sense of how much color perception enriches our lives and how its lack can make our sensory experience incomplete.” WorldBookEndsShowsProcessLordOur LivesColorReaderPerceptionPortionsRainbowIncompleteSensory Author:Vera Nazarian
“Clad in metaphor, the world becomes newborn to our senses, like a phoenix. It is the most effective fresh presentation of the elements of our life for our jaded, numbed, even ailing sense of imagination.” WorldImaginationOur LivesElementsMetaphorSensesPresentationPhoenixNewbornJaded Author:Vera Nazarian
“The one thing in the world of value is the active soul. And I think that soul doesn't necessarily die after we're dead and maybe there's a sense of sometimes we know more than we think we know about our lives and our demise.” ThinkingKnowsWorldSoulSometimesValuesDiesOur LivesOne ThingActiveDemise Author:Kathy Eldon
“I want you to stop running from thing to thing to thing, and to sit down at the table, to offer the people you love something humble and nourishing, like soup and bread, like a story, like a hand holding another hand while you pray. We live in a world that values us for how fast we go, for how much we accomplish, for how much life we can pack into one day. But I'm coming to believe it's in the in-between spaces that our lives change, and that the real beauty lies there.” PeopleWorldWantBelieveRealStoriesHandsRunningLyingValuesSpaceOur LivesPrayingOne DayOffersTablesHumbleAccomplishBreadLife ChangingI Want YouPacksSoupReal BeautyHand Holding Author:Shauna Niequist
“We usually can't know how, and we probably should not even ask, how our lives contribute to a better world.” KnowsWorldShouldAsksKnow HowOur Lives Author:Allen W. Wood
“If you think about black art, all black art, whether it's Invisible Man or whether it's James Baldwin, Langston Hughes, Zora Hurston, or Richard Wright, they all deal with elements of identity and trying to humanize our experience and our struggle in the world where people have been indifferent to who we are and what we are. It's basically just saying that our lives have meaning.” PeopleIfsThinkingMenWorldTryingHas BeensArtBlackDealsStruggleOur LivesIdentityElementsInvisibleWho We AreIndifferentJust SayingAll BlackBlack Art Author:Cheo Hodari Coker
“So much is wrapped up in our work and each book of the Bible points to Christ and the good news of what he's done that impacts the whole of our lives and the whole of our world. When our eyes are opened to see how each book of the Bible points us to the gospel, the relevance to our work and the need for this good news to enter into our work becomes increasingly evident.” WorldNeedsBookDoneWholeEyeChristOur LivesNewsImpactOur WorldEvidentGood NewsRelevance Author:David Kim
“We try to organize the world, which isn't organized the way our brains want to organize it. We tell stories about the people in our lives, we project ideas onto them. We project relationships with people, we make our lives into stories. I don't think we can avoid doing that.” PeopleThinkingWorldWayWantTryingIdeasStoriesBrainOur LivesProjectsOrganizedOrganizePeople In Our Lives Author:Charlie Kaufman
“If you stay in the mainstream of life, in other words, you let in the suffering of the world that invariably enters all of our lives by the time we're in our middle years, when we've experienced a few deaths and read a few headlines. Famine, poverty, abuse, you can't keep that all blocked out. If you let those things teach you, influence you, change you, those are the events that transition you without you even knowing it to become more compassionate. In other words, you hold onto your values, but you do it much more inclusively, humbly and in an open ended way. Suffering takes you there.” IfsWorldWayYearsSufferingValuesPovertyTeachKnowingOur LivesInfluenceMiddleEventsAbuseLive ByTransitionCompassionateMainstreamWithout YouFamineHeadlinesBlocked Author:Richard Rohr