The art of life lies in a constant readjustment to our surroundings.
-- Okakura Kakuzo

Most of what matters in your life takes place in your absence.
- Salman Rushdie

When you're through changing, you're through.
-- Bruce Barton

To repeat what others have said, requires education; to challenge it, requires brains.
-- Mary Pettibone Poole

People seldom see the halting and painful steps by which the most insignificant success is achieved.

Children require guidance and sympathy far more than instruction.

I am beginning to suspect all elaborate and special systems of education. They seem to me to be built up on the supposition that every child is a kind of idiot who must be taught to think.

It's a great mistake, I think, to put children off with falsehoods and nonsense, when their growing powers of observation and discrimination excite in them a desire to know about things.

My heart is singing for joy this morning! A miracle has happened! The light of understanding has shone upon my little pupil's mind, and behold, all things are changed!

We all like stories that make us cry. It's so nice to feel sad when you've nothing in particular to feel sad about.

--Anne Sullivan, 1866 - 1936

I love quotations because it is a joy to find thoughts one might have, beautifully expressed with much authority by someone recognized wiser than oneself.
-- Marlene Dietrich

I am getting pretty excited about the Atlanta Film Festival. I've put together my schedule several times, each time scaling back a bit - at first I had two features every night for 8 nights, plus more on 2 weekend days. Now I'm taking a few nights off, probably, just to get some sleep and catch up at work, since most days I'll be running out the door at 5pm on the dot.

Some highlights:

Naturally Obsessed: The Making Of A Scientist
Mixing humor with heartbreak, Naturally Obsessed tells a profoundly real yet intensely dramatic story about three irrepressible graduate students in a race to beat the competition to discover the switch that controls appetite in the human body. The pressure is on, as they each have to deal with their own personal challenges. Rob, a perennial dropout, dares himself to stay the course. Kilpatrick has to choose between the easy life and academic success. Gabriele hovers between high aspirations and self-doubt. Their guide and mentor, Larry, is a young professor deeply committed to passing on the baton of science. He urges his students to apply their creativity to solve problems, while encouraging them to embrace the emotional roller coaster of doing science. Over three years of filming, verite scenes of intense hands-on research reveal the ups and downs of the mentor-student relationship, the collaboration that science depends on, and the self-knowledge that success requires.

The Death Of Alice Blue
Something strange is going on behind the doors of Raven Advertising. It's Alice Blue's first day on the job and already she has set her sights on creating an impressive ad campaign for an important American wine company, not too mention the agency's top creative director, Stephen. Some may have the opinion that the advertising industry is full of blood-sucking vampires, but at Raven Advertising this may be literally the case. Alice befriends a group of co-workers who call themselves "The Resistance," led by the lovelorn Peter, who are convinced something very sinister is at work at Raven and Alice is somehow the key to unravelling the mystery. There is something about The Death of Alice Blue that has a quintessential Canadian feel to it. Filled with dark dry humor and a pleasant quirkiness that is evident from the acting to the costumes to the set design, it finds new life in the old story of the world's most famous undead.

The Last Lullaby
Price (a mesmerizing performance by Tom Sizemore) is a former hitman struggling to cope with retirement. He left the assassination business to live the "easy life," but retirement arrived with its own agenda. It was not the instant peace and calm that Price expected but rather emptiness, boredom, and, worst of all, restlessness. When circumstances present him with an opportunity for one last job, the million dollar price tag is too much to resist. That is until he learns his newest target is Sarah, a woman he shares an immediate kinship with, and two mysterious souls form a special bond as each tries to mend the wounds of their past.. The Last Lullaby plummets Price back into his old life and forces him into a corner from which he may never escape. Price's old ways no longer work for him when his heart opens, and he finds life beyond his profession. The tension finally comes to a head as Price must decide to close himself off again or open himself up to a world beyond his control.

500 Days of Summer
Boy meets girl. Boy falls in love. Girl Doesn’t. When Tom, a hapless greeting card copywriter and hopeless romantic, is blindsided after his girlfriend Summer dumps him, he shifts back and forth through various periods of their 500 days together to try to figure out where things went wrong. Starring Joseph Gordon Levitt and Zooey Deschanel, 500 Days of Summer (which premiered at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival) is a postmodern love story – well technically the film warns that it is not a love story at all. With a kicking soundtrack that includes classic modern rock music from stalwarts like The Smiths to new bands (including Atlanta’s own Black Lips – see them in We Fun as well, also playing at the festival), Fox Searchlight (the studio that brought you Slumdog Millionaire and Little Miss Sunshine) serve up another sure to be crowd-pleasing indie hit.

The Girl From Monaco
Bertrand Beauvois is a self-satisfied lawyer who has been hired to defend a wealthy woman accused of murdering her lover. Provided with a bodyguard to protect him against certain Russian interests, the innocuous Bertrand initially bristles at the constant presence of the tough, no-nonsense Christophe. Shadowed at every moment, Bertrand protests that this is overkill, but Christophe is nothing if not professional – and he has been hired to do a job. Things take a turn when the mild-mannered lawyer is dazzled by the attentions of Audrey, the stunningly beautiful local television weather girl. Mind and body meet, collide and flirt, but their relationship gets complicated when it is revealed that the now-indispensable Christophe once had a fling with Audrey, and holds a barely concealed grudge. The situation becomes even more complex, as Fontaine keeps us guessing, the cast romp through the situations and, this being a French romantic comedy, nothing goes as planned

If a man does not make new acquaintances as he advances through life, he will soon find himself alone. A man should keep his friendships in constant repair.
-- Samuel Johnson

All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.
-- James Thurber

Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
-- H. G. Wells

“Life is partly what we make it, and partly what it is made by the friends we choose.”
- Tennessee Williams

The reason most people never reach their goals is that they don't define them, or ever seriously consider them as believable or achievable. Winners can tell you where they are going, what they plan to do along the way, and who will be sharing the adventure with them.
-- Denis Watley

It’s not the tragedies that kill us, it’s the messes.
―Dorothy Parker

The death of democracy is not likely to be an assassination from ambush. It will be a slow extinction from apathy, indifference, and undernourishment.
- Robert Maynard Hutchins

I deserve only good in my life.

I release other people's fears and limitations. I think my own loving thoughts.

I'm trying to catch up on journals, but I'm days behind due to work. Sorry if I haven't commented on something important. :(

No bird ever flew nonstop from New York to Tokyo, or raced 15 miles high at triple the speed of sound. But birds do something else. They do not conquer the air; they romance it.
- Peter Garrison

Few people can see genius in someone who has offended them.
-- Robertson Davies

You can stand tall without standing on someone. You can be a victor without having victims.
- Harriet Woods

The aim of life is self-development. To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.
-- Oscar Wilde

Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'
-- Kahlil Gibran

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes.
—Mahatma Gandhi

We can secure other people's approval, if we do right and try hard; but our own is worth a hundred of it, and no way has been found out of securing that.
- Mark Twain

Gratitude is the most exquisite form of courtesy.
-- Jacques Maritain

I am a human being, not a human doing.

Don't equate your self-worth with how well you do things in life. You aren't what you do. If you are what you do, then when you don't... you aren't.

The winds and the waves are always on the side of the ablest navigators.
- Edward Gibbon

I speak and think positively.

I listen to what I say. If I hear myself using negative or limiting words, I change them.

Worry is a misuse of imagination.
-- Dan Zadra

I always have a choice.

I choose to believe that it is easy to change a thought or pattern.

Happy Birthday skinface!

I release the need to determine how things "should" be.

If you are suffering in your life right now, I can guarantee that this condition is tied up with some kind of attachment to how things "should" be going.

I am a Yes person.

If I dwell on what I don't want, then I will get more of it. I affirm only the good in life.

Bureaucracy defends the status quo long past the time when the quo has lost its status.
-- Laurence J. Peter

Absolute faith corrupts as absolutely as absolute power.
-- Eric Hoffer

The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously.
-- Hubert H. Humphrey

Not doing well with DST this morning... *stumble*

The Class was EXCELLENT. I highly recommend it. Hard to believe it wasn't a documentary, the acting was so perfect. Go go go.

I have the power to make changes.

It is so comfortable to play victim, because it is always someone else's fault. I have to stand on my own two feet and take some responsibility.

Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real.
-- Iris Murdoch

No, I'm not going to see Watchmen.

I'm in charge of my emotions; they're not in charge of me.

You control your emotions. You do not have to explode with anger whenever someone decides to behave in an angry and vindictive way.

What other people think of me is none of my business.

One of the highest places you can get to is to be independent of the good opinions of other people.

We are generally the better persuaded by the reasons we discover ourselves than by those given to us by others.
-- Blaise Pascal

Self-importance is our greatest enemy. Think about it - what weakens us is feeling offended by the deeds and misdeeds of our fellowmen. Our self-importance requires that we spend most of our lives offended by someone.
-- Carlos Castaneda

It is only a thought, and a thought can be changed.

The thoughts I choose to think and believe right now are creating my future. These thoughts form my experiences tomorrow, next week, and next year.

If you want to be free, there is but one way; it is to guarantee an equally full measure of liberty to all your neighbors. There is no other.
-- Carl Schurz

If you don't run your own life, somebody else will.
-- John Atkinson

I am at peace.

I relax and enjoy life. I know that whatever I need to know is revealed to me in the perfect time and space sequence.

It's snowing!

I am at ease with myself and I am at ease with other people.

I am even-tempered and emotionally well-balanced.