A lump rises in our throat at the sight of beauty from an implicit knowledge that the happiness it hints at is the exception.

You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.

Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.

The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.

There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.

Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.

Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.

Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.

One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.

To one's enemies: "I hate myself more than you ever could.

The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.

Loss of hope is root of distress.

People say keep your emotions outside, how the hell is that possible!!!!

Before you reach the point of forgiveness, you go through the phase where you pray... for every possible misfortune and ill luck to strike them dead while you sit and watch.

Abstainer: a weak person who yields to the temptation of denying himself a pleasure.

[W.H.R.] Rivers is the Rider Haggard of anthropology; I shall be the Conrad.

When your first baby drops her pacifier, you sterilize it. When your second baby drops her pacifier, you tell the dog: 'Fetch!'

I was into Metallica when they first started, like when Kill Em All came out.

I always describe my career as something where nothing ever popped overnight.

Reading is more of a left-brain process, and listening to music is a right-brain function.

She'd even violated the only sensible rule of dieting she'd ever run across, the sage advice of the Muppets Miss Piggy, who recommended never eating anything bigger than your head.