As I relish the incredible sense of community I’m experiencing on my road trip to promote My Journey Through War and Peace, I’ve been thinking about how encouragement from people around us—especially other women!—can empower us to keep going on this enlightening, but tough, inner journey.

Today, I want to share 10 quotes from women—from Gloria Steinem to Janis Joplin—that have given me solace and kept me going on my own heroine’s journey, and that I hope will inspire your own.

1. “God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there’s no turning back.” —- Gloria Steinem

2. “Like an old gold-panning prospector, you must resign yourself to digging up a lot of sand from which you will later patiently wash out a few minute particles of gold ore.” – Dorothy Bryant

3. “It takes courage…to endure the sharp pains of self discovery rather than choose to take the dull pain of unconsciousness that would last the rest of our lives.” ― Marianne Williamson

4. “Courage doesn’t happen when you have all the answers. It happens when you are ready to face the questions you have been avoiding your whole life.” ― Shannon L. Alder

5. “And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” -— Anaïs Nin

6. “Being an intellectual creates a lot of questions and no answers. You can fill your life up with ideas and still go home lonely. All you really have that really matters are feelings.” —- Janis Joplin

7. “Above all, be the heroine of your life, not the victim.” ― Nora Ephron

8. “Women observe subconsciously a thousand little details, without knowing they are doing so. Their subconscious mind adds these little things together – and they call the result intuition.” — Agatha Christie

9. “I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it.” — Alice Walker

10. “And that is just the point… how the world, moist and beautiful, calls to each of us to make a new and serious response. That’s the big question, the one the world throws at you every morning. ‘“Here you are, alive. Would you like to make a comment?’”— Mary Oliver

Now, I’d love to hear from you! What quotes or sayings inspire, empower and/or comfort you? Leave them in the comments below!