Before I published anything, I dreamed of publication, but I didn't actually write for it. I imagined that writing for an audience was something for fancier people. I aspired, but mostly I wrote for myself. I wrote because it made me happy.

One thing that blocks flow is self-consciousness.

I think there are different kinds of happiness. We know when we're happy a lot of the time, but then there are those moments that have more of an afterglow, when the happiness has more depth.

A lot of positive psychology is stuck in being the psychology of privilege, and I reject that.

In all of my looking at happiness, one thing I noticed right away is that the opposite of happiness isn't unhappiness or even depression, it's anxiety. It is something that can constantly block our happiness, or our chance to reach that sort of meditative state in our work or our home lives.

When I was a kid, my mother's parenting style teetered between benign neglect and intense bouts of violence.

Everything is freedom and everything is loneliness. Make your choice and let the rest fall away.