The truth is that our self-deceptive lies range from seemingly tiny untruths to massive life-altering falsehoods about reality.

One major cost of self-deception is that we use painful life experiences to justify being non-ideal versions of ourselves.

We would all benefit by shifting our focus from seeing pain as bad to seeing pain as motivation to change.

I cannot overemphasize the impact our childhood has on our ability to be honest because we live out what we learned as children in our adult relationships.

Living through difficult life circumstances in not an excuse for passing trauma onto someone else.

When you are not aware that you are bringing old learning to your current relationships, you will want to lie about where it is coming from.

We lie to reflect the aspirational goals that we unconsciously know we will not uphold.

Perhaps the most tragic way that self-deception harms us is that we start believing our lies and we teach them to others.

In fact, lying to ourselves may be the most dangerous thing in the world because we live our truth whether we are honest about it or not.

It is actually a good survival strategy to manipulate twist, and reorganize the truth in a way that is more consistent with what we can psychologically tolerate.

At the most basic level, self-deception is fooling ourselves into believing something that is false -- or -- not believing something that is true.

Too often travel, instead of broadening the mind, merely lengthens the conversation.

All of my books are acts of subversion disguised as historical fiction.

It's almost impossible to get a movie all together when there are two main cast members, let alone an ensemble cast with everyone's schedules. It's crazy if it works out.

Intelligent people make decisions based on opportunity costs.

However, there's no theme or concept behind Heathen, just a number of songs but somehow there is a thread that runs through it that is quite as strong as any of my thematic type albums.

You have to be deviant if you're going to do anything new.

I wasn't prepared to get a mammogram until I was 40 years old, like I'd been told. I never in my wildest dreams expected anything to be wrong.

I would like to see more successful business people run for office.

You can't be afraid. You can be sad if you like. You can be angry. But it's the fear that'll freeze you in place.

For us to remain in this world, our animal brain has to be there to support us.