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“I write my goals and priorities in pencil, so I can erase them. This is not so I can sell myself short, but so I can strive for more ambitious outcomes. Recovery is a lifelong process; the moment I engrave in stone my blueprint for living, I’ll rediscover and recover something that is paramount to the value of my life. And then I’ll be looking for a new stone.”

“In AA we talk a great deal about each other. Provided our motives are thoroughly good, this is not in the least wrong. But damaging gossip is quite something else. Of course, this kind of scuttlebutt can be well grounded in fact. But no such abuse of the facts could ever be twisted into anything resembling integrity. It can't be maintained that this sort of superficial honesty is good for anyone. So the need to examine ourselves is very much with us. Following a gossip binge we can well ask ourselves these questions: ‘Why did we say what we did? Were we only trying to be helpful and informative? Or were we not trying to feel superior by confessing the other fellow's sins? Or, because of fear and dislike, were we not really aiming to damage him?’ This would be an honest attempt to examine ourselves, rather than the other fellow. Here we see the difference between the use of the truth and its misuse. Right here we begin to regain the integrity we had lost.”

“I don’t foresee outgrowing my need for help.”

“We now know that we shall always practice these principles: first because we must, then because we ought to, and finally because the majority of us will deeply want to do just that.”

“Thelma told me that, no matter how much I feared making bad decisions, I could not learn how to make good decisions except by making decisions. ‘You’ll make mistakes,’ she said, ‘We all do. You will make some bad decisions before you learn how to make good ones. But what is true about good decisions is also true about bad ones: You will always learn from the consequences.’”

“How life looks to me depends on how I look at it. While this sounds simple, just like everything else in Alcoholics Anonymous, it requires continual practice in order to get good at it. I get better at it as each year passes. I am grateful that Alcoholics Anonymous is teaching me how to see straight, one day at a time.”

“Each day I turn my ongoing spiritual experience into a sane and happy usefulness among my fellow travelers.”

“We should question no one's transformation -- whether it be sudden or gradual. Nor should we demand anyone's special type for ourselves, because our own experience suggests that we are apt to receive whatever may be the most useful for our needs.”

“If I am truly going to grow along spiritual lines, I’m going to have to walk with the truest spirit of human compassion for others that I can muster in all of my affairs.”