Maggie A. Skinner

“Be with someone who is proud of you, someone you can laugh with, someone who listens to you, understands you, who treats you well and makes you a priority.”

I would like to be known as an intelligent woman, a courageous woman, a loving woman, a woman who teaches by being.

We are torn between nostalgia for the familiar and an urge for the foreign and strange. As often as not, we are homesick most for the places we have never known.

The problem, often not discovered until late in life, is that when you look for things like love, meaning, and motivation, it implies they are sitting behind a tree or under a rock. The most successful people in life recognize that they create their own love, they manufacture their own meaning, they generate their own motivation. For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday, and lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.

Stand on shaky legs, but face yourself to the wind. Nothing can stop you.

if you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the people to gather wood, divide the work, and give orders. instead, teach them to yearn for the vast endless sea.