“They say that, if we manage to live without too great an effort, it is entirely owing to the automatism which makes us unconscious of a great part of our movements. In order to take one single step...”

“I felt that the metal of my spirit, like a bar of iron that is softened and bent by a persistent flame, was being gradually softened and bent by the troubles that oppressed it. In spite of myself, ...”

“Meditation did not relieve me of my anxiety so much as flesh it out. It took my anxious response to the world, about which I felt a lot of confusion and shame, and let me understand it more complet...”

“All this wondering was the weather vane on top of the building of unrest and of discontent”

“Anxiety is love's greatest killer. It makes others feel as you might when a drowning man holds on to you. You want to save him, but you know he will strangle you with his panic.”

“Having friends was weird . . . but in a good way.”

“I always make sure that the world will prove me right. It gives me the freedom to contradict myself.”

“My peak? Would I even have one? I hardly had had anything you could call a life. A few ripples. some rises and falls. But that's it. Almost nothing. Nothing born of nothing. I'd loved and been love...”

“With slight misconceptions of reality we fabricate our hopes and beliefs, and we live off crusts that we call cakes, like poor children who make-believe theyre happy.”

“This little boy playing next to me is an intellectual mass of cells - better yet, he's a clockwork of subatomic movements, a strange electrical conglomeration of millions of solar systems in minatu...”

“A mature person reaps joy in the commonplace acts of living, appreciates the serenity of just being, while balancing the responsibilities that come naturally about when deeply immersed in family an...”