I grieve and dare not show my discontent, I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,I do, yet dare not say I ever meant, I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate. I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned, Since from myself another self I turned. My care is like my shadow in the sun, Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it, Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.

Inside of all of us there is the need and the desire to be heard, to have our innermost thoughts, feelings and desires expressed for others to hear, to see and to understand. We all want to matter to someone, to leave a mark. Writers just take those thoughts, feelings and desires and express them in such a way that the reader not only reads them but feels them as well.

Your love life is insignificant when it comes to raising your children to be respectable human beings. The moment you see them suffer or lower their standards because of your selfishness, is the day you should realize that nothing matters more than them. You are not just the queen or king of your fairy tale. The real story of your life is the gift of time God gave you with them.

Juggling and balancing effectively required that we make clear, legacy-driven choices about what we're trying to keep in the air and how we sequence our movements down the beam. Because the ultimate grade in life is not based on how far and fast we've walked the beam or how many things we’ve juggled—it’s based on how much we've enjoyed the exercise.

…what have you accumulated from the past—what are you in the process of accumulating that will be passed on, if not deliberately, then accidentally? Is this accumulation the best of what has been and the best of what is currently being written, sung, and created? Is it wise? And if not, what will be the next generation’s inheritance, your children’s legacy?

Sina jinsi. Nguzo ya maisha yangu ni historia ya maisha yangu. Historia ya maisha yangu ni urithi wa watu waliojifunza kusema hapana kwa ndiyo nyingi – waliojitolea vitu vingi katika maisha yao kunifikisha hapa nilipo leo – walionifundisha falsafa ya kushindwa si hiari. Siri ya mafanikio yangu ni kujitahidi kwa kadiri ya uwezo wangu wote; au 'pushing the envelope' kwa lugha ya kigeni.

Our elders, and our elders’ kin, and their kin before them, fought to keep Sunningrocks in our territory. Many of them lost their lives, giving up their last breath for stones that belong to us. Can we give up where they did not, turn tail and flee when they kept fighting so that their kits could hunt and play and bask on these rocks? Will you fight with me now, in honor of all our elders and all our unborn kits?

it was so hard to see what the future held because to perform at this game, you have to be “in the mud,” obsessed with the task at hand. Perspective is neutralized, stunted so that you can capture only the most relevant, time-sensitive data that will determine how to approach your opponent that day. Then you look up and realize your 20-year career has been a collection of days where you couldn’t see tomorrow.

I also remember being struck by de Sade's will, in which he asked that his ashes be scattered to the four corners of the earth in the hope that humankind would forget both his writings and his name. I'd like to be able to make that demand; commemorative ceremonies are not only false but dangerous, as are all statues of famous men. Long live forgetfulness, I've always said—the only dignity I see is in oblivion.

Never regard study as a duty but as an enviable opportunity to learn to know the liberating influence of beauty in the realm of the spirit for your own personal joy and to the profit of the community to which your later works belong."~Albert Einstein"Einstein is referring to ones 'legacy' and its intended future recipients as being willfully purposed to benefit them on their journey through this gift of life given to us by God

... a man could build whatever monuments he wanted in the worlds of politics, sports, entertainment, and business, but if they come at the expense of his children, then he has failed. Once the attention fades and the crowds stop cheering his name and his accomplishments are little more than fine print in a history book, the only thing that truly survives him is his child. That is his legacy. That is what defines him. All else is but a footnote.

Don’t try to present your art by making other people read or hear or see or touch it; make them feel it. Wear your art like your heart on your sleeve and keep it alive by making people feel a little better. Feel a little lighter. Create art in order for yourself to become yourselfand let your very existence be your song, your poem, your story.Let your very identity be your book.Let the way people say your name sound like the sweetest melody.

As the leaves randomly fell, she contemplated how they sacrificially gave up their essence to sustain new life. Or was it the tree’s sacrifice? Each leaf was a part of Gaia’s play. Their final act: to decompose so a new level of soil could be made, an earthen writing tablet for the next layer of history to be recorded. One generation became the groundwork for the next. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Nothing was exempt, not even the leaves.

After we’re feasted down to white sticks and it’s all covered in lions and trees and whatever the monkeys become prod the ground with a toe, staring down with glittering eyes at the guts of a wristwatch. After the bonfires and sun worship and they grow brains and can x-ray the ground. They can figure all this out, file it away. List my name with an asterisk after it, a footnote at the bottom phrasing my presence here in short, dull terminology.

Everyone has a unique problem of their own, an issue that follows them throughout life and never goes away. You discover it early and go on to struggle with it for the rest of your life, almost until it eventually becomes an old enemy that you lose the will to fight or hate anymore. And just as every person has their own void, their own haunt or their own unanswered question...they also have the power to turn it into a legacy every bit as profound as they make it.