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“Since today marks not only the last day of my life to this date, but also the first day of the rest of my life, and since I have come to believe that the best is yet to come, I think today has been my best day sober.”

“Keeping a Tenth Step journal about my day-to-day life, my relations with other people, and the stuff that still roiled around in my head helped me see patterns in my thoughts and behavior, which I could discuss with my sponsor. And once I began to sit quietly, reflect on what I’d written, and pray, I began to sleep peacefully for the first time in my life.”

“We can always come up with a reason to drink. The secret is, how many reasons can we come up with to stay sober?”

“My perception of any situation is in my control -- I have a choice about which way my mind will react. I try my best to look for positive solutions; I take my problems to my sponsor or I let my friends at a meeting know what is going on inside me.”

“The only way I ever found to displace a thought was to put another thought in its stead.”

“The temporary or seeming good can often be the deadly enemy of the permanent best.”

“No generation is a carbon copy of the previous one ... Young people in the meetings today are in many respects luckier: They have learned more in less time. If they seem to dwell at length on how they are feeling at the moment, it doesn’t mean they are less dedicated to stopping drinking one day at a time and practicing the Steps of the program. Nor does less shame, brought about by less stigma, mean less dedication.”

“An old-timer spoke about the danger of becoming complacent and explained the need for the Steps in her life. ‘The way I see it,’ she said, ‘I might have gotten the monkey off my back, but the circus is still in town.’”

“The first thing that captured me at my very first meeting was the way AA members talked with one another. There was a genuineness, something real there, that I wanted ... I saw they were sober and that they were honest with each other.”

“Although I have a lot of ‘yets’ out there, I have true friends who love me. All I need to do is call them and go to meetings and work my program, and for today the ‘yets’ won’t come.”

“The more I change, the more I hope the Traditions and principles of AA don’t change.”

“No prophet can presume to say whether the world outcome will be blazing destruction or the beginning, under God’s intention, of the brightest era yet known to mankind. I am sure we AAs well comprehend this scene. In microcosm, we have experienced this identical state of terrifying uncertainty, each in his own life.”

“At the end of each day ... I hope that I can say a short prayer of gratitude for another day of sobriety. Anything else good that happens is a bonus.”

“In despair, I had cried out, ‘Now I am willing to do anything. If there is a God, will he show himself?’ And he did. This was my first conscious contact, my first awakening. I asked from the heart, and I received.”

“I sometimes forget to feel gratitude for my sobriety ... This is why I must continue to work with others, to go to meetings, to be of some service to the world around me -- not because these are ‘good’ things, but rather so that I can once again be stimulated into feelings of gratitude for this life I have found.”