“The truly revolutionary promise of our nation's founding document is the freedom to pursue happiness-with-a-capital-H. ”

“How can you tell somebody who is pursuing happiness that they're somehow not American when that was the very first promise that America made?”

“the Bible is only as good and decent as the person reading it.”

“Christmas can have a real melancholy aspect, 'cause it packages itself as this idea of perfect family cohesion and love, and you're always going to come up short when you measure your personal life...”

“I didn't want kids to think that to be happy, they had to be famous or rich or live in the big city.”

“I got picked on a lot, even by teachers too. I liked to listen to musicals and bake, and my homeroom teacher found out and mocked me in front of the whole class for baking.”

“I think the highest forgiveness is to accept that creation is thoroughly tangled, with every possible quality given outlet for expression. People need to accept once and for all that there is only ...”

“You couldn't relive your life, skipping the awful parts, without losing what made it worthwhile. You had to accept it as a whole--like the world, or the person you loved.”

“Letting go doesn't mean that you don't care about someone anymore. It's just realizing that the only person you really have control over is yourself.”

“Much of what we called "depression" was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly high or expecting treasures we weren't willing to work for.”

“If ones life is so unsatisfying that an unhealthy activity brings a shred of happiness, it is nigh impossible to give it up unless something that brings greater happiness can be enjoyed in its stea...”

“She had known happiness, exquisite happiness, intense happiness, and it silvered the rough waves a little more brightly, as daylight faded, and the blue went out of the sea and it rolled in waves o...”

“The seeking of a mate shall be undertaken with due preparation and care. A life-bond should never be contemplated as a light thing--unlike a legal union or sanctified joining, the sealing of souls ...”

“I dont have cookie-cutter relationships, Rumi. Women arent iPhone apps that I download and discard!”

“In advising the heads of state to learn from tragedy rather than perpetuate its existence Robert Kennedy excalimed, "Tragedy is a tool for the living to gain wisdom, not a guide by which to live." ...”