I once took a workshop with Jim Shepard, and he has this term, 'rate-of-revelation,' that has come to mean a lot to me: 'the pace at which we're learning crucial emotional information about the stories' central figures.' An ever-increasing rate-of-revelation is good; a stagnant r-of-r is not.

The standard of 'affordable' housing is that which costs roughly 30 percent or less of a family's income. Because of rising housing costs and stagnant wages, slightly more than half of all poor renting families in the country spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing costs, and at least one in four spends more than 70 percent.

The best thing to do is stare it in the face and move on. We have to face our fears and plow through. I think taking chances takes a lot more courage than staying stagnant and doing what's safe and comfortable.

If you're not learning, then you're stagnant. If you're stagnant, then you're not evolving and the business isn't progressing.

The other night we talked about literature's elimination of the unessential, so that we are given a concentrated "dose" of life. I said, almost indignantly, "That's the danger of it, it prepares you to live, but at the same time, it exposes you to disappointments because it gives a heightened concept of living, it leaves out the dull or stagnant moments. You, in your books, also have a heightened rhythm, and a sequence of events so packed with excitement that I expected all your life to be delirious, intoxicated.

I'm so afraid of starting something new outside of Chad, the norm, everything, but I can't be stagnant, Tyson. I feel like I have no idea where I'm going in life anymore. The page is unwritten, and that scares me, but I'm going to be strong and face it head-on with a pen, not a pencil. Mistakes are bound to happen, but that's life-you grow and you learn from it. Hurt, that's inevitable, and so is growth. You have to let yourself grow and be happy-you can't wallow in this state that you're in.

"God, the Holy spirit and the bible is there to change people lives, but people who are inexorable, conservative?, stagnant and stubborn to change. People who don't want to change.

Anger is like flowing water; there's nothing wrong with it as long as you let it flow. Hate is like stagnant water; anger that you denied yourself the freedom to feel, the freedom to flow; water that you gathered in one place and left to forget. Stagnant water becomes dirty, stinky, disease-ridden, poisonous, deadly; that is your hate. On flowing water travels little paper boats; paper boats of forgiveness. Allow yourself to feel anger, allow your waters to flow, along with all the paper boats of forgiveness. Be human.

Look around you. Everything changes. Everything on this earth is in a continuous state of evolving, refining, improving, adapting, enhancing?changing. You were not put on this earth to remain stagnant.

Happiness consists in activity. It is running steam not a stagnant pool.

The best thing to do is stare it in the face and move on. We have to face our fears and plow through. I think taking chances takes a lot more courage than staying stagnant and doing what's safe and comfortable.