“Admitting pain humbles us to the reality of our personal histories and our present conditions. We no longer have to pretend we are something that we are not.”

“The more a child is abused, the more the child uses his abilities to anticipate, manage, prevent, dismantle, and challenge the abusing ways of his parents.”

“By aggrandizing one's own abilities and achievements, the grandiose person remains out of touch with who they truly are and as such, remains prone to crossing the boundaries of others.”

“The greater your ambition for the health of the world, the more sinister, diabolical, complex, and threatening the resistance you will meet.”

“Grandiosity is when we are wrapped up in winning life's false contest. This happens only when we live to impress the abusive parents in our heads, not when we are soberly and philosophically workin...”

“When we direct a lot of hostile energy toward the inner critic, we enter into a losing battle.”

“Whenever one person in a relationship is unwilling or unable to contact his or her vulnerability in the interaction, there is a simultaneous movement into judgement: self-attack, attack of the othe...”

“[Self]-distrust manifests blatantly in the judge's reaction to your experiences of expansion. 'Expansion' here refers to situations when you try something new, success at something you're never don...”

“I see them standing at the formal gates of their colleges,I see my father strolling outunder the ochre sandstone arch, thered tiles glinting like bentplates of blood behind his head, Isee my mother...”

“We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the world they really believed in...”

“Id never heard my parents make love. If they made love, they did it silently, like bank robbers, like surgeons.”