Until my 20^th birthday, Papa John would send me a thought for the day every day of February (the best month, our birthmonth). This year I decided to compile a list of my favorite quotes, phrases and poems that remind me of February: 

“In quoting others, we cite ourselves.”

Julio Cortázar

“Stay afraid but do it anyway. What’s important is the action, you don’t have to wait to be confident. Just do it and eventually the confidence will follow.”

Carrie Fisher

“I don’t know where I’m going from here, but I promise it won’t be boring.”

David Bowie

“Preach the gospel always and, when necessary, use words.” 

St. Francis of Assisi

“We shall not cease from exploration and the end of all our exploring will be to arrive where we started and know the place for the first time.”

TS Eliot

“You’ll be bored of him in two years and we’ll be interesting forever.”

Jo, Little Women

“It was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being.” 

TS Eliot

“You can’t make chicken salad out of chicken shit.”

“Live the full life of the mind, exhilarated by new ideas, intoxicated by the romance of the unusual.”

Ernest Hemingway

“She, of the rocket science brain and rodeo spirit.”

Amanda Lamb

“Remember the body of your community breathe in the people who sewed you whole it is you who became yourself, but those before you are a part of your fabric.” 

Rupi Kaur

“And in the end, it’s not the years in your life that count. It’s the life in your years.”

Abraham Lincoln

“Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing at all.” 

Helen Keller

“Tell me, what are you going to do with your one wild and beautiful life?”

Mary Oliver

“If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every encounter with another person.” 

Mr. Rogers

“For what matters in life is not whether we receive a round of applause; what matters is whether we have the courage to venture forth despite the uncertainty of acclaim.” 

A Gentleman in Moscow

“Try to learn to breathe deeply, really to taste food when you eat, and when you sleep really to sleep. Try as much as possible to be wholly alive with all your might, and when you laugh, laugh like hell. And when you get angry, get good and angry. Try to be alive. You will be dead soon enough.” 

William Saroyan

“If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to save us from it, and He will rescue us from your hand, O King. But even if he does not, we will not serve your gods or worship the image of gold you have set up.” 

Daniel 3:17-18

“There are no bad dates, only good stories.”

“There’s old ships and new ships, red ships and blue ships, but the best ships are friendships!”

“Be happy in the moment, that’s enough. Each moment is all we need, not more.”

Mother Teresa

“I go to seek a Great Perhaps.”

Francois Rabelais

“Women have minds and souls as well as just hearts, and they’ve got ambition and talent as well as just beauty. And I’m sick of people saying that love is all a woman is fit for.” 

Jo, Little Women

“There comes a day in every man’s life when he stops looking forward and starts looking back.” 

Maxwell Hill

“The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” 

Eleanor Roosevelet

“You only have two lives. The second begins when you realize you only have one.” 

Here are a few of my favorite poems:

27. “The world is a beautiful place 

Where lives can overlap at just the right time.

Every now and then,

We get to rope off

Certain connections

In our memories,

Leaving out the realities 

that would undoubtably tarnish

the shining gold place 

they have in our hearts

grandparents, almost lovers

weeklong friends

from summer camp.

Perhaps time

Is more romantic

Than we think

Perhaps she puts us

In just the right place

To love some people 

Without interference.”

28. “I have been in love more times than one, 

thank the Lord. Sometimes it was lasting

whether active or not. Sometimes

it was all but ephemeral, maybe only

an afternoon, but not less real for that.

They stay in my mind, these beautiful people,

or anyway beautiful people to me, of which

there are so many. You, and you, and you,

whom I had the fortune to meet, or maybe 

missed. Love, love, love, it was the 

core of my life, from which, of course, comes

the word for the heart. And, oh, have I mentioned

that some of them were men and some were women

and some– now carry my revelation with you–

were trees. Or places. Or music flying above

the names of their makers. Or clouds, or the sun

which was the first, and the best, the most 

loyal for certain, who looked so faithfully into

my eyes, every morning. So I imagine

such love of the world- its fervency, its shining, its

innocence and hunger to give of itself- I imagine

this is how it began.”

Of Love, Mary Oliver

29. “He spreads out the northern skies over empty space;
    he suspends the earth over nothing.
⁸ He wraps up the waters in his clouds,
    yet the clouds do not burst under their weight.
⁹ He covers the face of the full moon,
    spreading his clouds over it.
¹⁰ He marks out the horizon on the face of the waters
    for a boundary between light and darkness.
¹¹ The pillars of the heavens quake,
    aghast at his rebuke.
¹² By his power he churned up the sea;
    by his wisdom he cut Rahab to pieces.
¹³ By his breath the skies became fair;
    his hand pierced the gliding serpent.
¹⁴ And these are but the outer fringe of his works;
    how faint the whisper we hear of him!
    Who then can understand the thunder of his power?”

Job 26:7-14

Here are a few photos from the best birthday dinner with my parents and Sevilla friends!