“If you're living completely on your own, break out of solitary confinement. Seek to understand others, and help them understand you.”

“Theres a Chinese word that means soul sister, and that is the word I would use to address you in my heart. Listen to me, soul sister: Fate or luck or destiny already put you through hell once. Plea...”

“Martha," she said. "Just let it go." "I'm trying," I said. I want to explain to her that this was like telling someone who has been mauled to death by a bear to let the animal go while it was still...”

“Fact: From quitting smoking to skiing, we succeed to the degree we try, fail, and learn. Studies show that people who worry about mistakes shut down, but those who are relaxed about doing badly soo...”

“Cheerfully fessing up to our failures turns crazy mind off, humility and compassion on. I learned this in a karate dojo that had a strange tradition. Everyone there loved recounting failure stories...”

“No one else can take risks for us, or face our losses on our behalf, or give us self-esteem. No one can spare us from life's slings and arrows, and when death comes, we meet it alone.”

“I shiver, thinking how easy it is to be totally wrong about people-to see one tiny part of them and confuse it for the whole, to see the cause and think it's the effect or vice versa”

“At sunrise everything is luminous but not clear.”

“I think it's impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves.”

“Absence makes the heart grow fonder, but it sure makes the rest of you lonely.”

“For Beatrice, when we first met, I was lonely, and you were pretty.Now I am pretty lonely.”

“I missed him so much that it felt like a physical pain in the area below my ribs. I opened my mouth to accommodate it. I put my hand to it. A hollow, aching, piercing place.”

“There is a personal sacrifice required to realize Gods passion”

“Personal Responsibility is the state of being the person who caused something to happen.”

“Writing is hard work. Attempting to write a decent story is friggin exhausting!”