How do people get rich? I started out in life asking this question. Whenever I saw a rich person I would ask where their money was from, and invariably, or should I say inevitably, the answer was a natural resource, or else an unnatural resource. Oil would be a common answer, or real estate, or steel - this was before computers. The answer was never the answer you wanted to hear. The answer was never, "Poetry - their money's from poetry, Fran," or, "That's one of the great essay fortunes in this country," or, "You know, he's the biggest epigram magnate in Europe."

And so I learned that I was not in the moneymaking end of the moneymaking business.
- Fran Lebowitz on money, Vanity Fair, July 1997

Money? Money's easy. Money's nothing more than energy.

If money isn't flowing in your life, that means your emotions are blocked. Flow of money is directly associated with flow of feelings. When there's something wrong in a marriage, the money dries up. When you don't feel you deserve something, the money dries up. When you're not doing something you really want to do, the money dries up.

If you get your emotions flowing again - be they angry, frustrated, hurt, feelings of abandonment or grief, whatever - the money will start flowing again. Just don't get violent with anything other than a pillow or punching bag! No matter how bleak things seem right now, if you invest some effort into expressing your feelings to a friend, partner, counsellor, or someone in a chat room or on a message board, it will start the ball rolling.
- Renowned clairvoyant Alan Leslie Pilkington

I was afraid Adam would slow me down, and he has.

Not because he has required more care and time than a 'normal' boy (he is the most helpful and least demanding of my children), but because the immediacy and joy with which he lives his life make rapacious achievement, Harvard-style, look a lot like quiet desperation.

Adam has slowed me down to the point where I notice what is in front of me, its mystery and beauty, instead of thrashing my way through a maze of difficult requirements toward labels and achievements that contain no joy in themselves. Adam takes his joy straight up, in purer form than most of us can handle.

He was the person who, at two years of age, spent enough time experimenting to learn that his four-month-old sister was capable of laughter, and determining exactly what would make her laugh. He is the one who goes into transports of delight over clean sheets, or packaged waffles, or batteries.

- from Expecting Adam, by Martha Beck