If you start in the pit of despair with these profane, awful things, even a glimmer of hope or awareness is going to occur that's much brighter coming from this dark, awful beginning.

You buy furniture. You tell yourself, this is the last sofa I will ever need in my life. Buy the sofa, then for a couple years you're satisfied that no matter what goes wrong, at least you've got your sofa issue handled. Then the right set of dishes. Then the perfect bed. The drapes. The rug. Then you're trapped in your lovely nest, and the things you used to own, now they own you.

You gain power by pretending to be weak. By contrast, you make people feel strong. You save people by letting them save you.

Some writers research in order to write. I write in order to research topics that interest me. Especially if I can meet with other people, in forums from illness support groups to phone-sex hotlines, and learn what other people know best.

People fall so in love with their pain, they can’t leave it behind. The same as the stories they tell. We trap ourselves.

The world can be a lot bet­ter than we set­tle for. All you have to do is ask.

You have no idea what it is like to constantly disappoint people. You see it the moment you meet them. You see in their eyes that they expected something so entirely different, and here they are meeting you.