In the process of planning and having a wedding, I forgot there would actually be a marriage, a union of minds, bodies, souls, and issues that would come together as soon as the ceremony was over.

You have to meet people where they are, and sometimes you have to leave them there.

Your willingness to look at your darkness is what empowers you to change

Gratitude is like a magnet; the more grateful you are, the more you will receive to be grateful for.

Comparison is an act of violence against the self.

Change doesn't have to be hard, and healing doesn't have to hurt. Surely by now you know that every thing happens for a reason! There is something better awaiting you on the other side of this.

No storm can last forever. It will never rain 365 days consecutively. Keep in mind that trouble comes to pass, not to stay. Don't worry! No storm, not even the one in your life, can last forever.

Be patient with yourself. Be gentle with yourself. Know that all things are working in your favor. If you take one step toward the light of Spirit, Spirit will take five steps on your behalf.

Challenges come so we can grow and be prepared for things we are not equipped to handle now.

Everything happens when it needs to happen; everyone is always where they need to be. You will never miss out on what is meant for you, even if it has to come to you in a roundabout way.

Sitting alone, listening to the sound of your breath, the beating of your heart is a reminder that you are sacred and blessed.

But every acquisition that is disproportionate to the labor spent on it is dishonest.

We are not defined by what knocks us down - we are defined by how we get back up

Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being.

Of Orson Welles: It's like meeting God without dying.

Freedom is not only the absence of external restraints. It is also the absence of irresistible internal compulsions, unmanageable passion, and uncensorable highlights.

Death is only a launching into the region of the strange Untried; it is but the first salutation to the possibilities of the immense Remote, the Wild, the Watery, the Unshored.

but writers, Garp knew, were just observers - good and ruthless imitators of human behavior.

I might be a Cuban American, but I'm also an Afro-Cuban American.

Study the processes and methods of those who are better at it than you... there's someone who knows something you don't, who has honed a skill more than you have. Rival your rival.

I feel like today we always glorify the young, just-plucked-from-college writer. But it's much harder to start writing later, in middle age, struggling on a book around a full-time job and family.