In anguish and desperation, I reached out as I had many times before to the presence I call the Beloved. This unconditionally loving and wakeful awareness had always been a refuge for me.

On this sacred path of Radical Acceptance, rather than striving for perfection, we discover how to love ourselves into wholeness.

The boundary to what we can accept is the boundary to our freedom.

Observing desire without acting on it enlarges our freedom to choose how we live.

Pain is not wrong. Reacting to pain as wrong initiates the trance of unworthiness. The moment we believe something is wrong, our world shrinks and we lose ourselves in the effort to combat the pain.

But this revolutionary act of treating ourselves tenderly can begin to undo the aversive messages of a lifetime.

As I noticed feelings and thoughts appear and disappear, it became increasingly clear that they were just coming and going on their own. . . . There was no sense of a self owning them.

What would it be like if I could accept life--accept this moment--exactly as it is?

I found myself praying: "May I love and accept myself just as I am.

I was manipulating my inner experience rather than being with what was actually happening.

The belief that we are deficient and unworthy makes it difficult to trust that we are truly loved

I'm learning with my mom how to cook more Spanish food. I'm trying to make a good paella, but that's a real art.

The Poet's leaves are gathered one by one, In the slow process of the doubtful years.

My real journey had very little to do with traveling Europe, and a whole lot to do with traveling my own mind.

My valleys are higher than most people's peaks. I stay at that level.

Premature burial works just fine as a cure for adolescence.

My mother was a Northern woman, daughter of Hon. John Sergeant, a distinguished lawyer, and for many years representative in Congress from Philadelphia.

Well, I'm still looking for Maurice Ashley. My essential qualities. I think that more than anything, I try to do the right thing, I think about doing the right thing.

That's an astonishment that we're waiting to find out what the [Donald Trump] policy is, that was the central plank, the central rationale for his candidacy.

I don't aspire to direct like many actors. I would aspire most likely to do some writing, but I haven't had a chance to do that.

It will be all right if it turns out all right.