Everyone is extremely hard and troubled to be around. Everyone has something substantially wrong with them. Everyone is extremely hard to live with.

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.

It’s okay, ” I tell her.“It is okay to be happy

Alexander assured her, 'Eva, none of us know our children. Because they are not us.

No level of attention is ever enough to sacrifice your dignity.

I never went to camp as a kid. I couldn't get into an Ivy League school. I wouldn't join a biker club.

We're living in a fearful time. Since 9/11 people have become more afraid than before, because of terrorism. There's a lot of confusion about evil, where it's all coming from.

I once felt bad because I had no shoes, and then I met a man who had no feet. He was wearing an ankle bracelet that kept falling off.

Knowledge is exploding, so you need to commit yourself to a plan for lifelong learning.

The function of intellect is to provide a means of modifying our reactions to the circumstances of life, so that we may secure pleasure, the symptom of welfare.

Don't stop, echoes the older Liberian lady's voice. Don't ever stop. My answer to her: I never will.

All our stories are part invention - the way we've decided to make sense of what has happened.