Kaydee Barker

“To me, bitterness is the under-arm odor of wishful weakness. It is the graceless acknowledgment of defeat. I have no urge to make any concessions like that to the world as yet. I might be like that some day, but I doubt it. I am in the struggle with the sword in my hands, and I don’t intend to run until you run me. So why give off the smell of something dead under the house while I am still in there tussling with my sword in my hand?”
― Zora Neale Hurston, Dust Tracks on a Road

“Inside each of us there is a noble heart. This heart is the source of our finest aspiration for ourselves and the world. It fills us with the courage to act on our aspirations. Our nobility may be obscured at times, covered over with small thoughts or blocked by confused and confusing emotions. But a noble heart lies intact within each of us nonetheless, ready to open and be offered to the world… When we clear away all that blocks it, this heart can change the world. - 17th Karmapa”
― Ogyen Trinley Dorje, The Heart Is Noble: Changing the World from the Inside Out

“Love is what remains when everything else is gone. This is what I should have told my children when we left Texas. What I will tell them tonight. Not that they will understand yet. How could they?
I am forty years old, and I just learned this fundamental truth myself.
Love. In the best of times, it is a dream. In the worst of times, a salvation.
I am in love. There it is. I've written it down. Soon I will say it out loud. To him.
I am in love. As crazy and ridiculous and implausible as it sounds, I am in love. And I am loved in return.
And this-love-gives me the courage I need for today.
The four winds have blown us here, people from all across the country, to the very edge of this great land, and now, at last, we make our stand, fight for what we know to be right. We fight for our American dream, that it will be possible again.
Jack says that I am a warrior and, while I don't believe it, I know this: A warrior believes in an end she can't see and fights for it. A warrior never gives up. A warrior fights for those weaker than herself.
It sounds like motherhood to me.”
― Kristin Hannah, The Four Winds

“We hold nothing back – not our effort, not any resources we might have, not time itself. We do not even hold our futures to ourselves. If we limit our aspirations to short-term aims and allow our aspirations to end when we attain those limited results, we will not create the momentum needed to maintain our enthusiasm over the long haul, until that time when we have developed our qualities of mind and heart to their fullest capacity. – 17th Karmapa”
― Ogyen Trinley Dorje, Interconnected: Embracing Life in Our Global Society