Brandi L. Bates

Drama does not just walk into our lives. Either we create it, invite it, or associate with it.

When my son speaks of playing sports, I've always told him: playing on the team is great, but aspire to be the guy who owns the team. I've always told my son: most of the guys on the team will end up bankrupt with bum knees, but not the guy who owns that franchise.

You will be perpetually unhappy if you continue to refuse to walk in your calling.

I would tell my 14 year old self to never ever, ever put all of your money in one bank account. And love the ones who love you back. You're going to want to quit...DON'T! Oh, and get everything in writing.

Never accept yourself as a finished product. Be a finished product when you die. As long as you have breath in your lungs, expand yourself.

Do little things every day that no one else seems to want to do, be patient, and success will find you.

Every morning I look in the mirror and remind myself: "No one owes you sh*t!" In this way, I am never disappointed. Never placing blame.

Most people don't have real friends. You have people in your life waiting for opportunities to see what YOU can do for them.

His ruby red rimmed moist eyes were two glasses of cranberry. He wore a cashmere sweater the color of Earl Grey tea...

Sometimes transitional periods in life leave you feeling like a great big jumble of loose, split ends.

In order to grow, I promise you'll have to let go of some habits. 10 times out of 10, they'll be the habits you're most in love with.

Remember to remember: sometimes your adversary is your biggest asset. Where would David be without Goliath? Jesus without Judas?

Some books must be sipped slowly like a strong bourbon. Most books must be devoured more than once because as you age you distill more.

Whatever it is you want in this life, be it material things, a place you want to be, or an experience you want to have, you must first make it real in the realm of your consciousness.

A writer will divine a metaphor from a pattern on a dress, or a gesture, because sunsets have been done before.

thighs made of hymns, I read 'em like I'm reading runes. Now tell me where my future lies...your neck, can I Savion on it?

THE NEXT DAY WAS RAIN-SOAKED and smelled of thick sweet caramel, warm coconut and ginger. A nearby bakery fanned its daily offerings. A lapis lazuli sky was blanketed by gunmetal gray clouds as it wept crocodile tears across the parched Los Angeles landscape.When Ivy was a child and she overheard adults talking about their break-ups, in her young feeble-formed mind, she imagined it in the most literal of essences. She once heard her mother speaking of her break up with an emotionally unavailable man.She said they broke up on 69th Street. Ivy visualized her mother and that man breaking into countless fragments, like a spilled box of jigsaw pieces. And she imagined them shattered in broken shards, being blown down the pavement of 69th Street.For some reason, on the drive home from Marcel__ apartment that next morning, all Ivy could think about was her mother and that faceless man in broken pieces, perhaps some aspects of them still stuck in cracks and crevices of the sidewalk, mistaken as grit.She couldn__ get the image of Marcel having his seizure out of her mind. It left a burning sensation in the center of her chest. An incessant flame torched her lungs, chest, and even the back door of her tongue. Witnessing someone you cared about experiencing a seizure was one of those things that scribed itself indelibly on the canvas of your mind. It was gut-wrenching. Graphic and out-of-body, it was the stuff that post traumatic stress syndrome was made of.

can't even sleep through the night without you and those sun-dried ginger ale complected limbs crocheted into my thighs...