Edith Wharton, et al.

In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways.
--Edith Wharton, US Novelist (1862-1937)

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It seems to me, that if you tried hard, you would in time find it possible to become what you yourself would aprove; and that if from this day you began with resolution to correct your thoughts and actions, you would in a few years have laid up a new and stainless store of recollections, to which you might revert with pleasure.
--Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre (1847)

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A self-narrative that meets the accuracy, peace-of-mind, and believeablity criteria is likely to be a quite useful one, precisely by avoiding too much instropsection.
--Timothy D. Wilson, Strangers to Ourselves (2002)

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“And the truth is that the truth can never ultimately hurt.”
--Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones (1986)

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“Anything we fully do is an alone journey. . . . you can’t expect anyone to match the intensity of your emotions.”
--Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones (1986)

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“Writing practice softens the heart and mind, helps to keep us flexible so that rigid distinctions between apples and milk, tigers and celery, disappear.”
--Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones (1986)