“What frightened me most was, I could no longer believe in my own life as a story. Everyone needs a story, a part to play in order to avoid the realization that life is without significance. How els...”

“Some people, perhaps those with more dignity and less rage gnawing at the roots of their being, are nicer as failures, For me, it was like descending a deep pit that had no bottom”

“That is the worst thing about despair: it is not constant, any more than love is.”

“If you read fairy tales carefully, youll notice they are mostly about people who arent heroes. They dont have special powers, or gifts. Often they are despised as stupid, They are bullied, beaten u...”

“All age is a kind of tiredness, I think. When youre young, the lines never show. Every morning you wake unmarked, wiped clear by sleep. One day, though, you see lines that itch, as though some crum...”

“I knew exactly when the fever had struck. I had been reading Hamlet in an English class at school. Everyone else stumbled, puzzling over the strange words. Then it had been my turn, and the languag...”

“You have no choice. You must leave your ego on the doorstep before you enter love.”

“Define yourself radically as one beloved by God. This is the true self. Every other identity is illusion.”

“As Venus within Eros does not really aim at pleasure, so Eros does not aim at happiness. We may think he does, but when he is brought to the test it proves otherwise... For it is the very mark of E...”

“I could not tell you if I loved you the first moment I saw you, or if it was the second or third or fourth. But I remember the first moment I looked at you walking toward me and realized that someh...”

“Peace and supreme joy may seem like end-states to practitioners on more difficult spiritual paths, but the path of devotion should be filled with peace and joy from the very beginning. Their absenc...”

“To be diligent means to be serious and devoted to the work of God”

“In every marriage more than a week old, there are grounds for divorce. The trick is to find and continue to find grounds for marriage.”

“You don't know when you're twenty-three.You don't know what it really means to crawl into someone else's life and stay there. You can't see all the ways you're going to get tangled, how you're goin...”

“Even the jerks earn some of our affection. We can be glad they're gone and yet still mourn the good parts.”