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“The Fourth Step lets me look at myself, look into my fear of not getting something I want or of losing something I have, get a perspective on my character defects, and move forward to try to establish true partnerships with other human beings.”

“Inside of every human being there is a healing power. I had cut my finger and it had gotten well; I’d broken a bone and it had gotten well ... How come? That to me, in its simplest form, is a concept of a power greater than I am.”

“The wisdom of AA is so deep that it confines its own part in our personal recovery to nothing more than suggestion. AA leaves it entirely up to you and to me to decide, not only whether to use this program, but also how to use it.”

“Had I not been blessed with wise and loving advisers, I might have cracked up long ago.”

“AA may or may not get me to heaven, but it surely got me out of hell.”

“I’m usually about eighty percent of the problem – well, maybe sixty percent, but the major part, you can bet on that. If I can leave out the largest percent (me), there is hardly any problem at all!”

“The experience of reality does not have to be postponed.”

“Because each of us, at any moment, is the sum total of every choice he or she has ever made, it is not sheer fantasy to expect each day to be the very best day we have yet lived.”

“If we examine every disturbance we have, great or small, we will find at the root of it some unhealthy dependency and its consequent unhealthy demand. Let us, with God’s help, continually surrender these hobbling liabilities.”

“Sometimes we register surprise, shock, and anger when people find fault with AA. We are apt to be disturbed to such an extent that we cannot benefit from constructive criticism. This sort of resentment makes no friends and achieves no constructive purpose. Certainly, this is an area in which we can improve.”

“You never know until you go out to meet it what any given day is going to be, but the way you go to meet it surely makes a difference.”

“I have had to face my past, one episode at a time, and become willing to look at the truth. I could feel the pain and fear, like trolls under the bridge, waiting to jump out and challenge my self-esteem.”

“’Absolute humility would consist of a state of complete freedom from myself, freedom from all the claims that my defects of character now lay so heavily upon me. Perfect humility would be a full willingness, in all times and places, to find and to do the will of God.’”

“Some days I feel almost normal, almost sane.”

“I believe anyone can be helped if they have an honest desire to stop drinking. I’m living proof.”