I believe that in judging our actions we are more severe than professional judges. We judge not only our actions, but our thoughts, our intentions, our secret curses, our hidden hate.

Since desire always goes towards that which is our direct opposite, it forces us to love that which will make us suffer.

The bed must be a beautiful place, not only because you make love there but because you dream there as well.

Three or four threads may be agitated, like telegraph wires, at the same time, and if I were to tap them all I would reveal such a mixture of innocence and duplicity, generosity and calculation, fear and courage, I cannot tell the whole truth simply because I would have to write four journals at once.

Stories are the only enchantment possible, for when we begin to see our suffering as a story, we are saved.

For all of my patients sensuality is a giving in to 'the low side of their nature.' Puritanism is powerful and distorts their life with a total anesthesia of the senses. If you atrophy one sense, you also atrophy all the others, a sensuous and physical connection with nature, with art, with food, with other human beings.

The way to recognize a dead word is that it exudes boredom.