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“A friend of mine told me about going to see the Statue of Liberty on a field trip with his grammar school class. He said that as they walked up the long spiral staircase, they all held hands in a line. He couldn't see the person at the beginning or the end of the line but he felt safe. He knew he was connected to the rest of his schoolmates. That's the way it is in AA. We can't see the people at either end of the line. But we know they're there -- and we know we're safe.”

“If we dwell on the past or the future, we put ourselves back into the torture chamber. We stop changing. Boredom, pain, and futility take over again. We have been ... We will be ... We no longer are. The 24-hour program disappears. Anxiety, anger, and a desire for revenge replace spiritual experience. Awareness and surrender cease. We are on a dry drunk.”

“Practicing the Eleventh Step, along with reworking all the other Steps, has given me greater integrity and strengthened my sobriety. This is the kind of dependence I need: a healthy dependence on the Twelve Steps.”

“Growing pains are never to be feared, provided I am willing to learn the truth about myself from them.”

“I may be a Loner but I am never alone spiritually. For this, I am deeply grateful.”

“A new chapter has once again started in my life -- a chapter that has no ending, a chapter that I did not write, but a chapter with many characters.”

“I spent the first thirty years making a mess of the life I was given, the next thirty trying to figure out this simple program, and now I can try in the last thirty to loosen up, let life happen, and try to have a little fun.”

“No self-pity, no anger, no jealousy, no hate. What had this program done to me?”

“Without a connection to my Higher Power, I am the same old person with the same old defects, causing the same old pain in my life and others’.”

“As individuals, we can carry the AA experience and ideas into any outside field whatever, provided that we guard anonymity and refuse to use the AA name for money-raising or publicity purposes.”

“Sobriety -- freedom from alcohol -- through the teaching and practice of the Twelve Steps, is the sole purpose of an AA group.”

“Notes in the same key resonate together .... No matter how much continuous sobriety I have to my and AA’s credit, I am still only one drink away from a drunk, just like everybody else in these meeting rooms.”

“Spiritual fitness is required if I am to be of service to anyone.”

“We don't have to go to Akron, Ohio, to see Dr. Bob's memorial. Dr. Bob's real monument is visible throughout the length and breadth of AA. Let us look again at its true inscription -- one word only, which we AAs have written. That word is sacrifice.”

“I don’t just hear the slogans anymore; I feel them when I speak them ... They take hold of me; they change the course of my day if I let them.”