“It's wonderful to be alive and to walk on earth.” — Thích Nhất Hạnh b. 11 October 1926

"The more unknowable the mystery, the more beautiful it is." — David Lynch

Sylvia Plath standing beside her bicycle, Marblehead, Massachusetts, 1951.

Bram van Velde, Paris, October, 1959.

“I’m never gonna know you now, But I’m gonna love you anyhow.” — Elliott Smith d. 21 October 2003

"I plead with you, never, ever give up on hope, never doubt, never tire, and never become discouraged. Be not afraid." — St John Paul II f. 22 October

"I use hope. And by hope I mean a kind of positive engagement with uncertainty... I want to leave us on the hook where we have some responsibility, because we have some power, because we don’t know what’s going to happen, so let’s see if we can shape it." — Rebecca Solnit

"Between the experience of living a normal life at this moment on the planet and the public narratives being offered to give a sense to that life, the empty space, the gap, is enormous." — John Berger

“[U]nless all races and all ages of man have been totally deluded, there seems to be such a thing as grace, such a thing as beauty, such a thing as harmony — all of which are wholly free, and available to us.” — Toni Morrison

“Regard your limitations as secret strengths. Or as constraints that you can make use of.” — Brian Eno

“Hope is not a form of guarantee, it's a form of energy, and very frequently that energy is strongest in circumstances that are very dark.” ― John Berger b. 5 November 1926

"Before the terrifying prospects now available to humanity, we see even more clearly that peace is the only goal worth struggling for." — Albert Camus b. 7 November 1913

"We have all known the long loneliness and we have learned that the only solution is love and that love comes with community." — Dorothy Day b. 8 November 1897

“What is important is not the length of life, but the depth of life. What is important is not to make life longer, but to take your soul out of time, as every sublime act does.” — Leo Tolstoy

"Beauty grows in you to the extent that love grows, because charity itself is the soul's beauty." — St Augustine of Hippo b. 13 November 354

“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.” — Albert Einstein

“Maybe it seems mad that I go out like this and live out under the stars and the sky for a few days — but I am like that.” — Georgia O’Keeffe b. 15 November 1887

"The great difficulty and crowning glory of art is to paint, to draw, to write, naturally and simply." — Auguste Rodin d. 17 November 1917

“When people believe in boundaries, they become part of them” — Don Cherry b. 18 November 1936