People are as healthy and confident as the stories they tell themselves.

It is easy to forget how mysterious and mighty stories are. They do their work in silence, invisibly. They work with all the internal materials of your mind and self. They become part of you while changing you. Beware the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.

The Nigerian storyteller Ben Okri says that ‘In a fractured age, when cynicism is god, here is a possible heresy: we live by stories, we also live in them. One way or another we are living the stories planted in us early or along the way, or we are also living the stories we planted — knowingly or unknowingly — in ourselves. We live stories that either give our lives meaning or negate it with meaninglessness. If we change the stories we live by, quite possibly we change our lives.’

I was going to be a scientist.

Beware of the stories you read or tell; subtly, at night, beneath the waters of consciousness, they are altering your world.

One of the greatest gifts my father gave me - unintentionally - was witnessing the courage with which he bore adversity.

What you see is what you make. What you see in a people is what you eventually create in them.