“A heart that is open is an uncaged bird with sunlight under its wings and the whole sky its song—where our hearts are open, we know love. The walls that build around our hearts, stemming the flow of love, are a natural response to hurt, what we do to shield ourselves from pain; each stone is a simple reaction to fear. But the walls don’t shelter us from our pain because the hurt is already inside, and they block the sunlight and space our hearts need to heal and grow and to blossom. It is our reaction to fear that builds walls, our compassion and awareness that open our hearts again to love. The walls fall away where we grow loving kindness, and they fall away every time salt finds our wounds and we can gently unfold from our hurt, see our fear in the kind light of awareness and be willing to meet it.”

— Quiet Lotus
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“If you hear a voice within you saying, ‘You are not a painter,’ then by all means paint … and that voice will be silenced.”

— Vincent van Gogh
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“To enjoy—to love a thing for its own sake and for no other reason.”

— Leonardo da Vinci
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“It is not for me to know what lies beyond this life, but the thought that wild flowers may one day grow from my heart, that tree roots may fill the space of my veins, that my lungs may one day become the worm that feeds the song in a bird’s throat—that brings me the peace heaven whispers of.”

— Quiet Lotus
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“Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.”

— Carl Jung
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