“You yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection”

“You can search throughout the entire universe for someone who is more deserving of your love and affection than you are yourself, and that person is not to be found anywhere. You, yourself, as much...”

“Smiling at someone can have significant health consequences.”

“Seeking happiness is not the problem. The problem is that we often do not know where and how to find genuine happiness and so make the mistakes that cause suffering for ourselves & others.”

“When you recognize and reflect on even one good thing about yourself, you are building a bridge to a place of kindness and caring.”

“Never feel ashamed of your longing for happiness.”

“Our categories are important. We cannot organize a social life, a political movement, or our individual identities and desires without them. The fact that categories invariably leak and can never c...”

“The uniqueness of every soul is not a theme that our current culture, obsessed with group identities, cares to assert.”

“I can't blame you for trying to categorize me. It's a human instinct. It's why scientists are, to this day, completely flabbergasted by the duck-billed platypus: it's furry like a mammal, but lays ...”

“People are too complicated to have simple labels.”

“I hated labels anyway. People didn't fit in slots--prostitute, housewife, saint--like sorting the mail. We were so mutable, fluid with fear and desire, ideals and angles, changeable as water.”

“People don't want other people to be people.”