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“Practicing the Twelve Traditions to the best of my ability has become just as vital a part of my personal recovery program as practicing the Twelve Steps. The Steps teach me how to think and act. The Traditions keep my personal program of recovery simple, well-balanced, and healthy.”

“In the first six months of my own sobriety, I worked hard with many alcoholics. Not a one responded. Yet this work kept me sober.”

“Part of the magic of AA is that the Fellowship, like the loving God who presides over us all, never gives up hope for the suffering alcoholic.”

“The other Steps can keep most of us sober and somehow functioning. But Step Eleven can keep us growing, if we try hard and work at it continually.”

“I’ve found a life I never knew existed. I’m so overwhelmed with gratitude that there’s no room for a bad day.”

“In great measure, we AAs have really found peace. However haltingly, we have managed to attain an increasing humility whose dividends have been serenity and legitimate joy.”

“To be open, I must believe there is something to be open to; that’s what I mean by spirituality. At the very least, I need openness to my own future.”

“While I wouldn’t recommend that anyone become an alcoholic, I believe that sober alcoholics living the AA way of life have been blessed with a gift. It’s a gift that can’t be bought, that can’t be won in a lottery, that can’t be stolen, forged, or rented.”

“More and more we regard all who labor in the total field of alcoholism as our companions on a march from darkness into light. We see that we can accomplish together what we could never accomplish in separation and in rivalry.”

“When I begin to worry about things I can do nothing about, I tell myself to accept what you can’t change. Often I’ve used the ideas in the Serenity Prayer as a trigger for relinquishing my need to control and as a reminder to take action when some discontentment can be remedied.”

“If I am to have a share of those promises enumerated in the AA book, there is a price I must pay. That price is destruction of self-centeredness.”

“I inched a little bit closer to AA and a little bit closer to myself ... I was suddenly a part of things, no longer just a shadow figure pulled toward the edge by the centrifugal force of my own fears.”

“I grew up thinking that I had to perfect my personality, then I got into AA, and AA said, no, that isn’t the way we do it; only God can remove our defects. I was amazed to find that I couldn’t be a better person simply by trying harder!”

“When we consult an AA friend, we should not be reluctant to remind him of our need for full privacy. Intimate communication is normally so free and easy among us that an AA adviser may sometimes forget when we expect him to remain silent. The protective sanctity of this most healing of human relations ought never be violated.”

“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.”