There was really only one person who - and I remember to this day - he was a fireman, and he said, "You'll never know what you'll do when you're in a fire." Everyone else was like: "I don't care; I would have saved my children; I could have done it. Even if I was asleep I would have woken up and saved my children." But the fireman said, "You never know what's going to happen unless you're in there."

Creativity does not belong exclusively to professional artists and geniuses; it is the birthright of every single human being. Creativity is our common heritage. You don’t need to quit your job and move to Paris in order to lay claim to this heritage - all you have to do is clear some space in your life for whimsy, invention, sensory pleasure, and play. Most of all, you have to learn how to follow your curiosity more than your fear.

You love new boyfriend?" "I think so. Yes." "Then you must spoil him. And he must spoil you.

Happiness is the consequence of personal effort. You must fight for it, strive for it, and insist upon it.

This is what intimacy does to us over time. That's what a long marriage can do: It causes us to inherit and trade each other's stories. (p.237)

True wisdom gives the only possible answer at any given moment, and that night, going back to bed was the only possible answer.

The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not.