Quotes About Community

LORD, show me those in my neighborhood, my circle of friends, and my family that you want me to pray for and build relationships with. They may be the very people you have appointed to eternal life. Equip me to be a light to those who don't know you

It was a train full of strangers, and they were all the same.

You see, sometimes when you work by yourself in a field such as ours, it helps to share knowledge among professionals. I'm not saying that we watch one another's back or anything, because we don't. It's more of a back-scratching than a back-watching affair, as in, "You scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours." Officially, none of us has ever heard of any of us.

if there's one thing other than traffic in Seattle, it's coffee. You can't swing a dead squirrel without hitting a Starbucks, or failing that particular evil empire, an indie establishment.

Besides, American ought to be a good thing, the kind of thing that brings everybody together instead of deciding who's good enough to be one and who isn't.

Well, when I was a little girl we had 17 cats once. They all lived outside, and they kept having more kittens. My mom made us put little ribbons around each kitten's neck, put them in a wagon, and go door-to-door around the neighborhood to try to give them away.

If you're in your thirties or early forties and still single, did you ever get tired of going to church and not fitting in anywhere? You were too old for the college and careers class, but you felt a little out of place in the forty-five and above singles class. No offense to them! It was a great class and I knew some great people there, but I just felt like I didn't really fit anywhere.

Many churches skip our demographic and offer us nothing. They go from the college and career group to the young marrieds. They forget that many these days are in their thirties and forties, yet alone. Mother's Day can also be a hot button for some women who desire children.

There is no cure except to live the hell out of our lives, to take it apart, to put it back together, to dig it all up, and then fill the hole. To help ourselves and one another to the best of our abilities. To believe everything entirely, while also calling bullshit for what it is.

Most of the people I met on the PCT passed only briefly through my life, but I was enriched by each of them. They made me laugh they made me think, they made me go on another day, and most of all, they made me trust entirely in the kindness of strangers.

If we rise, they will rise with us every time, no matter how many times we've fallen before. I hope you will remember that the next time you fail. I hope I will too.

The Dream of a Common Language

We should surround ourselves with people who feel like abundance.

I've long believed literature's greatest superpower is how it makes us feel less alone. Across generations, cultures, classes, races, genders, and every other divide, stories and sentences can make us think, Oh yes, me too. That is precisely how it feels to love and lose and triumph and try again.

The only thing I ever hope to do as a writer is to make people feel less alone, to make them feel more human, to make them feel what I have felt so many times as a reader: stories have the power to save us by illuminating the most profoundly beautiful and terrible things about our existence.

How has your sense of despair contributed to your desire to positively impact your community? How have you countered ugliness by bringing beauty and hope to others through your work? In what ways has your rage, sorrow, and fear illuminated the path forward as you make change in the world? How might you embrace the less-desirable feelings you have about the meaning of your work so they can serve rather than stop you?

If you take that risk, if you take that chance, if you tell the truest, hardest, deepest story you have within you, you're not going to step into the light and find that you're there alone. That you're going to be surrounded by people who are there with you.

I happen to believe that America is dying of loneliness, that we, as a people have bought into the false dream of convenience, and turned away from a deep engagement with our internal lives.

I've long believed literature's greatest superpower is how it makes us feel less alone.

I happen to believe that America is dying of loneliness, that we, as a people, have bought into the false dream of convenience, and turned away from a deep engagement with our internal lives—those

There is a world of people out there who will love you for who you are. A whole, vibrant, fucked-up, happy, conflicted and joyous mass of people.

We're hurtling through time and space and information faster and faster, seeking that network connection. But at the same time we're falling away from our families and our neighbors and ourselves. We ego-surf and update our status and brush up on which celebrities are ruining themselves, and how. But the cure won't stick.

There is a world of people out here who will love you for who you are. A whole, vibrant, fucked-up, happy, conflicted, joyous, and depressed mass of people who will say, You're gay? So the fuck what? We want you to be among us. That's the message of the It Gets Better Project. Hold on, it says, and stick it out, because guess what? It gets better.

There's a crazy lady living in your head. I hope you'll be comforted to hear that you're not alone.