"One day you will be the one called Master (Naruto). You'll be the one to treat others to ramen. We can't stay kids forever."- Shikamaru Nara (Naruto)"

"I think when you become a parent you go from being a star in the movie of your own life to the supporting player in the movie of someone else's."

"Always choose the future over the past. What do we do now?"

"Life sucks, then you die. Then it sucks again."

"It is a very natural human trait to destroy that which frightens us."

"Some people insist that 'mediocre' is better than 'best.' They delight in clipping wings because they themselves can't fly. They despise brains because they have none."

"There is one who remembers the way to your door: Life you may evade, but Death you shall not."

"The past can not be cured."

"I have known many gods. He who denies them is as blind as he who trusts them too deeply. I seek not beyond death. It may be the blackness averred by the Nemedian skeptics, or Crom's realm of ice and cloud, or the snowy plains and vaulted halls of the Nordheimer's Valhalla. I know not, nor do I care. Let me live deep while I live; let me know the rich juices of red meat and stinging wine on my palate, the hot embrace of white arms, the mad exultation of battle when the blue blades flame and crimson, and I am content. Let teachers and philosophers brood over questions of reality and illusion. I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content."

"Sometimes you imagine that everything could have been different for you, that if only you had gone right one day when you chose to go left, you would be living a life you could never have anticipated. But at other times you think there was no other way forward--that you were always bound to end up exactly where you have."

"Know who you are, and be it. Know what you want, and go out and get it!"

"Do you wake up as I do, having forgotten what it is that hurts or where, until you move? There is a second of consciousness that is clean again. A second that is you, without memory or experience, the animal warm and waking into a brand new world. There is the sun dissolving the dark, and light as clear as music, filling the room where you sleep and the other rooms behind your eyes."

"Life always begins with one step outside of your comfort zone."

"Each day is God's gift to you. What you do with it is your gift to Him."

"I feel like a big faker because I've been putting my life back together, and nobody knows."

"Stop asking God to bless what you're doing. Find out what God's doing. It's already blessed."

"Life doesn't require ideals. It requires standards of action."

"Life is grace. Sleep is forgiveness. The night absolves. Darkness wipes the slate clean, not spotless to be sure, but clean enough for another day's chalking."

"... you don't have to wait for someone to treat you bad repeatedly. All it takes is once, and if they get away with it that once, if they know they can treat you like that, then it sets the pattern for the future."

"I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform."

"Life is not a straight line leading from one blessing to the next and then finally to heaven. Life is a winding and troubled road. Switchback after switchback. And the point of biblical stories like Joseph and Job and Esther and Ruth is to help us feel in our bones (not just know in our heads) that God is for us in all these strange turns. God is not just showing up after the trouble and cleaning it up. He is plotting the course and managing the troubles with far-reaching purposes for our good and for the glory of Jesus Christ."

"No, I regret nothing, all I regret is having been born, dying is such a long tiresome business I always found."