"In a suspended psychic state, writers cull words and symbols from the mystical world of memory, imagination, and intuition."

"Reading and writing are solitary activities that increase a person's capacity for concentration, awareness, and conceptual thought as the person weaves immediate information with stored memories."

"Imagination and recollection of cherished memories of the pastimes are closely related. We do not recall memories verbatim. As our perspective changes regarding our place in the world, we shift through our recollections and revise our memories. People possess the ability to edit their memories by repressing unbearable episodes and highlighting incidences that generate fond memories. How we perceive and comprehend ourselves in the past, the present, and the future shapes our evolving sense of self. Humankind's ability to repress unpleasant events and humankind's ability to act as the solo editors of our germinating awareness of the world that we occupy is ultimately responsible for activating our metamorphosing sense of identity."

"It is ultimately the ebony of our pain, our blackest monuments, which lead us to seek an enlightened way of living. We are unable to hear the voice leading to our own salvation until we fall into the depths of an abbess manufactured by living a heedless life. From this state of floundering in the gloomy lagoon, we can awaken to find the light bearing the seeds of truth that will redeem us. Looking inward, we overcome stubborn resistance, and we revivify long lost and forgotten powers. The experience of soul-searching perspicacity transfigures us. We might even feel as if we died a spiritual death and then we were reborn. From our dark pit, a shaft of light emerges."

"Reading books exposes us to the consistency and uniqueness of being human. Book reading is an investigatory process. We read books in order to encounter the orchestrated words that describe emotions and observations that we too have experienced but are unable to glean the right alignment of words that fully embody the resonance that we seek."

"Without thoughtful effort and purposeful change, human life does not improve. The key to living a meaningful life is to accept reality. There is no inherent meaning to life just as there is no hidden meaning behind death. Life is limited and death is simply an ending. The only meaning to life is what each person passionately commits their life to accomplishing."

"A person experiences anxiety when they realize their insignificance in the cosmic field, which present state of angst can exacerbated by other confusing life questions."

"The ability to experience bliss requires the gift of attentive awareness, curiosity, and constant learning. We are ultimately the product of what we want " our personal obsessions " and how we think. Thoughts merge into feelings that determine if we are happy or sad. Feelings can manifest into thoughts that drive our ambitions and guide our personal actions, which enable us to live an intensified life."

"Americans share an affinity to establish a distinctive identity and know one's self in a physiological, psychological, and spiritual sense, and we strive to attain self-actualization, self-realization, and/or bliss."

"A true understand of oneself is vital. Writing enables us to act as a sun in our own universe, to become the perfect overseer, and observe the innumerable changes in the seasons of life. Writing is an intense form of self-exploration, and through thoughtful encounters with the humble self, we grow, and that growth diminishes unhappiness and creates joy."

"We must treasure our memories just as we cherish our dreams because without dreams and memory human life would be sad, brutal, and meaningless."

"Idealistic notions that guide a younger person frequently prove unsustainable. Concluding any stage of life demands that a person rebuilds oneself after living destroys our ideological beliefs."

"We distill happiness from garnering joy in the ordinary fragments of life, while dedicating personal effort to creating a body of work that one can look back on their deathbed and be satisfied with achieving. Happiness comes from living beautifully, which necessarily involves reason in thought and speech (logos), and leading an ethical and virtuous life devoted to achieving worthy goals."

"Living is a creative and active process of diligent learning that entails industrious human action, attentive awareness, and thoughtful reflection. Learning is one facet of human beings innate capacity that can provide a sense of worthiness to human life."

"Families share relationships based not only blood, but also the unique affiliation of a terribly long cord when measured in comparison with any other undertaking in a person's life, from cradle to the grave if you will. These intimate associations create a bond of love, affection, goodwill, and joy that we seek to duplicate when we marry and begin creating our extended families."

"Every person lives bounded by the structural formation of human anatomy and the provincial demands of the human condition."

"A person can escape an ingrained pattern of mental incapacity or 'non compos mentis' ("no power of the mind) by reading, writing, thinking, and studying their environment for telling external determinates that will shape a journey of the mind, body, and soul."

"In the modern world, human beings display little tolerance for waiting. We are addicted to fast food, instant messaging, and other conveniences of life. Patience is a lost virtue."

"A person begins childhood with a mind that is essentially a blank slate " a tabula rasa " before receiving outside impressions. Early childhood experiences and perceptions begin the formulation of a state of conscious awareness, the infantile steps in forming a personality, developing social and emotional behavior, and acquiring practical and book knowledge. Childhood plays a critical role in forming our final version of a self-concept."

"Writing a memoir is a holistic method of learning and healing by placing responsibility for personal transformation on the spiritual authority of the self. Writing a person's life story is useful to gain a comprehensive understanding regarding a person's maturation, distinctive stages of personal development, and the influences provided by their family and society. The writing processes also serves as a catharsis for painful personal events that a person seeks to integrate into their transmuting being. Writing our personal story, we discover new dimensions of our being."

"Exiting from any long-term relationship comes at great personal expense, which explains why so many people are understandably reluctant to endure the cost of severance. Beginnings and endings are always dramatic and occasionally traumatic. Youthful brio allows us to engage in transformation. As we age, we carefully weigh the spectacle of continuing enduring harrowing situations or seeking melodramatic renovation of our core being. Analysis of the respective cost benefit ratio, consideration of the known versus the unknown, can delay or permanently deter us from altering our environment, leading our persona to become more rigid as we mature. Transformations in life are disconcerting to people who resist change."

"A teenager boy is a monstrous cyborg, an unfeeling, beastly machine, not fully human, and not housebroken. Rumbustious teenage boys are an infernal organism disdainful of everything, yet intent of contributing to human evolution."

"The self is a subjective entity created by our thoughts and deeds. All sense of happiness and emotional wellbeing turns upon how a person organizes their stream of consciousness into a creation and development of a positive or negative self-image."

"Expressing doubt is how we begin a journey to discover essential truths."

"What gives a person's brief time on this planet meaning is engaging in small acts of kindness. Bestowing an act of kindness upon other people is the greatest gift that a person will ever give to other people and such acts shall renew the gifting person. When we unreservedly accept and love our brethren, we become the ineluctable wind that vivifies the lives of other people."

"What work a person does to earn a viable income shapes their thinking patterns, buttresses their sense of self-worth, and affects how they adapt to predictable and unpredictable obstacles."

"The ego resists change. False pride is an impediment to change."

"A person's attitude creates the tone of his or her life. The highest expression of human dignity is to live a purposeful life devoted to principles and exhibiting compassion for other people."

"Human beings possess the gift of personal freedom and liberty of the mind. We each possess the sovereignty over the body and mind to define ourselves and embrace the values that we wish to exemplify. Personal autonomy enables humans to take independent action and use reason to establish moral values. We are part of nature. Consciousness, human cognition, and awareness of our own mortality allow us to script an independent survival reality and not merely react to environmental forces."

"Our thoughts shape us. We become our obsessions. Our thoughts can enslave us or save us."

"All people intuitively seek emotional equanimity, freedom from anxiety, distress, and trepidation that might cause a person to lose symmetrical balance of their mind. Nature intended for human beings to live in an enthusiastic and curious manner, always exploring, striving, and creating."

"Self-reflection enables every person to alter the trajectory of their personal storyline by reviewing a series of episodic occurrences and making value judgments regarding the past. How we perceive our history colors the present, our deeds of today script the future outcome of individual persons, and the outcome of many people making conscious decisions using their cognitive processes including the ability to remember and share memories influences the direction of human development and the progress of society."

"Our most intense joy comes not from personal feats, but from helping other persons achieve their goals. We become suppler human beings when we find true joy in witnessing other people's successes and unabashedly share in their joyful accomplishments."

"Character is fate. Every day is training day."

"Storytelling is ultimately the only way that we know besides song, dance, painting, and music to share with our tribesmen what it means to be human, express the indefinable feelings that unite humankind."

"A person begins to live a moral life when they cease asking what life will provide them and begins to determine what he or she expects from oneself."

"A life of conflict and greediness causes a person to suffer from the rheumatism of sadness."

"We cannot replicate other people's lives. We must each institute and broker a personalized meaning to our exclusive existence. We must each serve as our own Zen master, awaken to our inviolate personal truth, and strive to fulfill our sui generis (unique) nature."

"Summertime is a period for youthful explorations, a joyful time when we learn lessons without grand expectations or harsh consequences."

"Summers end to soon just as childhood ends before we apprehend the effervescent of our youth."

"All knowledge begins with an expression of curiosity pertaining to the unknown or unknowable. Expressions of uncertainty and a doubtful nature lead a person to useful discoveries."

"It is understandable why a person might shirk a brutal self-assessment until the unforgiving talons of a reckless life rips their thin skin covertures into shreds leaving a person ensnared in their destructive thoughts and lacerated with bolts of self-incrimination."

"We wait too long to tell the people we love that they are the very reason that we exist. We assume that our wife, child, other family members, and friends understand our love and affection. We assume that people we care about understand our enigmatic idiosyncrasies and willingly accept the shrouded reasons behind our demonstrable oddities. We assume that other people sense that we struggle valiantly in our blackened landscape. We presume that other people comprehend our struggle to glean meaning amongst the ashes spewed from the absurd circumstances that we operate. Sometimes we need to stop and tell the tenderhearted persons whom we care about that we love them and explain that our awkward strangeness is not a rejection of them."

"An authentic life facing reality without mental equivocation is the simplest type of life."

"The mental mist of ambiguity and the fog of ambivalence hamper human existence."

"Authors do not need to offer us the answers to such weighty questions such as how to live and prepare us to accept death. The aim of a writer's is to frame worldly questions that allow all readers too independently and jointly explore life-altering questions in a way that satisfies the fabric of thought corresponding to our respective times."

"Our personal experiences and mental reasoning skills establish the range of our perception of reality. Our physical and mental abilities determine the outer perimeter regarding what we can experience and learn. Our inaugurating dreams are unlimited by physical reality and our genetic composition. There will always be an unbridgeable rift between countless combinations of human dreams and the infinity of reality, unless we accept what we are without wishing to be something else."

"The ego with its protective defense mechanisms is the biggest impediment to attaining spiritual growth."

"Our compassion, spirituality, and appreciation of beauty provide us with the capacity to love."

"Fate demands that we continue suffering, until we willingly seek out and discover the sacred path of righteousness. Until we surrender to the sameness of life, we are unable to experience the absolute ground zero of reality. Only by surrendering our desires, by readjusting our consciousness to a state undefined, unbound, and unmotivated by passion and desire, will we experience life transformed."