Glennon Doyle Quotes

Good art originates not from the desire to show off but from the desire to show yourself. Good art always comes from our desperate desire to breathe, to be seen, to be loved. In everyday life, we are used to seeing only the shiny outer layer of folks. Art makes us less lonely because it always comes from the desperate center of the artist — and each of our centers is desperate. That's why good art is such a relief.

As I climbed out of the tub and shook my hair dry, I told myself: Maybe in a different life. Isn't that interesting? As if I had more than one.

I'm a grown-ass woman now and I do what the fuck I want. I mean this with deep respect and love — and with the desire that you, too, will do what the fuck you want with your own singular precious life. The truth is that it matters not at all what you think of my life — but it matters supremely what you think of your own. Judgment is just another cage we live in so we don't have to feel, know, and imagine. Judgment is self-abandonment. You are not here to waste your time deciding whether my life is true and beautiful enough for you. You are here to decide if your life, relationships, and world are true and beautiful enough for you. And if they are not and you dare to admit they are not, you must decide if you have the guts, the right — perhaps even the duty — to burn to the ground that which is not true and beautiful enough and get started building what is.

Hard work is important. So are play and nonproductivity. My worth is tied not to my productivity but to my existence. I am worthy of rest.

People have different ideas about what's brave. You did the brave thing, because the brave thing is doing what your Knowing tells you to do. You don't ask others what's brave, you feel and know what's brave. What you know to do might be the opposite of what others are telling you to do. It takes special bravery to honor yourself when the crowd is pressuring you not to. [...]

Sometimes being brave requires letting the crowd think you're a coward. Sometimes being brave means letting everyone down but yourself.

Girls and women sense this. We want to be liked. We want to be trusted. So we downplay our strengths to avoid threatening anyone and invoking disdain. We do not mention our accomplishments. We do not accept compliments. We temper, qualify, and discount our opinions. We walk without swagger, and we yield incessantly. We step out of the way. We say, "I feel like" instead of "I know." We ask if our ideas make sense instead of assuming they do. We apologize for…everything. Conversations among brilliant women often devolve into competitions for who wins the trophy for hottest mess. We want to be respected, but we want to be loved and accepted even more.

I looked at all of those contradictory opinions and thought: If there is, in fact, an objective right or wrong way to handle this, why do all of these people have such different ideas about what a person should do? I had an epiphany: It must be that should and shouldn't, right and wrong, good and bad — they're not wild. They're not real. They're just culturally constructed, artificial, ever-changing cages created to maintain institutions. It struck me that in every family, culture, or religion, ideas of right and wrong are the hot cattle prods, the barking sheepdogs that keep the masses in the herd. They are the bars that keep us caged.

I don't think that gayness is contagious. But I am certain that freedom is.

Now when I feel lost, I remember that I am not the woods. I am my own tree. So I return to myself and reinhabit myself. As I do, I feel my chin rise and my body straighten.

Heartbreak delivers your purpose. If you are brave enough to accept that delivery and seek out the people doing that particular world-changing work, you find your people. There is no bond like the bond that is forged among people who are united in the same world-healing work.

Despair says, "The heartbreak is too overwhelming. I am too sad and too small, and the world is too big. I cannot do it all, so I will do nothing.

Courage says, "I will not let the fact that I cannot do everything keep me from doing what I can.

We all want purpose and connection.

Tell me what breaks your heart, and I'll point you toward both.

Let's conjure up, from the depths off our souls: The truest, most beautiful lives we can imagine

Defensiveness is for people who are afraid that what they have can be taken from them.

We are here to fully introduce ourselves, to impose ourselves and ideas and thoughts and dreams onto the world, leaving it changed forever by who we are and what we bring forth from our depths. So we cannot contort ourselves to fit into the visible order. We must unleash ourselves and watch the world reorder itself in front of our eyes.

The building of the true and beautiful means the destruction of the good enough. Rebirth means death. Once a truer, more beautiful vision is born inside us, life is in the direction of that vision. Holding on to what is no longer true enough is not safe; it's the riskiest move because it is the certain death of everything that was meant to be. We are alive only to the degree to which we are willing to be annihilated. Our next life will always cost us this one. If we are truly alive, we are constantly losing who we just were, what we just built, what we just believed, what we just knew to be true.

If you are uncomfortable — in deep pain, angry, yearning, confused — you don't have a problem, you have a life. Being human is not hard because you're doing it wrong, it's hard because you're doing it right.