“My sponsor taught me how to be of service with grace and gratitude. She taught me how to listen, how to be respectful, and most importantly, to mind my own business.”

“It doesn’t matter who or what God is if I can just remember it’s not me!”

“Everyone’s recipe for serenity is different. It’s like vegetable soup -- nobody makes it quite the same.”

“Should our present success continue, people will commence to assert that AA is a brand new way of life, maybe a new religion, capable of saving the world. We shall be told it is our bounden duty to show modern society how it ought to live ...

“Fortunately most of us are convinced that these are perilous speculations, alluring ingredients of that new heady wine we are now being offered, each bottle marked ‘Success’!

“Of this subtle vintage may we never drink too deeply.”

“How will I know if I’ve really hit my bottom?’ I asked at my home group. ‘When you stop digging,’ they told me.”

“AA works on all kinds of nuts (including myself). I just needed to find the right wrench.”

“The AA program does not recognize walls. It is immune to the conditions which break down an individual relationship, the difference in social levels, of intellect, of experience. AA takes no heed of this. It has one primary law, help your fellow man and do it by example rather than by instruction.”

“I’m still mystified by how I got sober, and the only answer that makes sense is that I stopped drinking through the grace of God. I was thinking about the difference between those of us who get sober and those who are still drinking, and I believe the difference is that we have accepted the grace that was offered. Every day, my Higher Power gives me the grace to be sober, and every day I make the choice not to drink, to accept the grace.”

“While I have years of sobriety, I really only have this day.”

“Sometimes I wonder if this illness isn’t a gift rather than a problem.”

“During days and nights of darkness as I face the demons of self, the knowledge that my God is always in charge keeps me trudging to the end of each journey. With God, AA, and willingness I can meet the other me and begin putting my fractured self together again.”

“I believe most of us would agree that the general idea of anonymity is sound, because it encourages alcoholics and the families of alcoholics to approach us for help. Still fearful of being stigmatized, they regard our anonymity as an assurance their problems will be kept confidential; that the alcoholic skeleton in the family closet will not wander in the streets.”

“AA's greatest power is not in the program itself, but in the examples of the men [and women] who have followed it.”

“My home group's primary purpose is to carry the AA message to the alcoholic who still suffers. Some of those have much sobriety, because the alcoholic who still suffers is not necessarily a newcomer. However, when newcomers do show up at our home group we try to focus our discussion on what's in the Big Book and how it can help them if they are willing to follow some simple suggestions.”

“Through Step Five, God has removed my shame about being an alcoholic.”