Thirteen Quotes that Guided My Year

In no particular order

Pressed along the bottom and sides of my desktop monitor are sticky notes of various colors with guiding quotes written on them, tacked into the bulletin board I face to my left are more, and scrawled in a blank Field Notes memo book are the ones I really want to remember beyond this year.

Many of the quotes I’ve found in my own reading journey throughout the year, but some of them are jotted down from others sharing snippets of what they’ve read. (Did you know that most books sell not because of fabulous marketing campaigns, but because of the slow trickle of word of mouth? Someone talking about what they’ve read to someone else. I love this. Many of the source work from these quotes have made it onto my reading lists for 2026 and, as an author, I love the lived truth of this!)

Here are some of the quotes that guided my way in 2025.

“The good writer seems to be writing about himself, but has his eye always on that thread of the universe which runs through himself and all things.”

—Ralph Waldo Emerson

“Make friends. Ignore enemies.”

—Austin Kleon

“I want to journey toward my best hopes and not my worst fears.”

—Sarah Bessey

“You never reach a point of certainty, a point of mastery where you can say, ‘Right now, I understand how this is done.’ That is why so many talented people stop writing. It hard work to tolerate this not knowing.”

—Jenny Offill

“You will freeze in place if you remain this way. You must not, dear. You must move.”

—Rainer Maria Rilke

“It is surprising how much one can produce in a year, whether of buns or books or pots or pictures, if one works hard and professionally for three and a half hours a day for 330 days. That was why, despite her disabilities, Virginia was able to produce so much.”

—Leonard Wolff

“My subconscious is working for a solution.”

—George Saunders

“All emotions start out as love. Later, that love is worked on by the forces of luck and suffering. Hate is just soured love. Fear is wounded love. Longing is homeless love. Love, not pain, is the mother. Love is the taproot.”

—Amity Gaige, Heartwood

“If you try to be for everyone, you’ll end up being for no one.”

—Seth Godin

“In this next stage of my life…I just really want to be connective tissue for this landscape, of good and with a long view, because we are in a really hard time right now. It’s not going to be four year cycles, it’s like ten or twenty years.”

— Krista Tippett

“Rarely, if ever, are any of us healed in isolation.”

—Bell Hooks

“I live my life in widening circles.”

—Rainer Maria Rilke

“But you cannot control everything. All you can do is face the world with quiet grace and hope you make a sliver of difference. You must trust that you being the best possible you matters somehow. That being an attentive and generous friend and citizen will prevent a thread or two of the social fabric from unraveling.”

—Brian Doyle

I hope there were one or two quotes in there that make it into your 2026, that become a guiding light for you along the way. I am curious, though, what is a line or two that has pulsed through you over the past year? What is something that felt new to you at the beginning of the year and now feels in your marrow, perhaps in a surprising way? Maybe what helped you this past year is what will help someone else in 2026!

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