We're miserable because we think that we are mere individuals, alone with our fears and flaws and resentment and mortality.

The Augusteum warns me not to get attached to any obsolete ideas about who I am, what I represent, whom I belong to, or what function I may once have intended to serve.

Dear me, how I love a library.

He told me that one of the reasons people are so unhappy is they don't talk to themselves. He said you have to keep a conversation going with yourself throughout your life to see how you're doing, to keep your focus, to remain your own friend. He told me that he talked to himself all the time, and that it helped him to grow stronger and better everyday.

No experience in this world has ever been cathartic without the willing participation of the individual. Life does not automatically bestow wisdom or growth upon anyone just for showing up.

I was perfectly happy in my boring life before you came along.

I actually have a great deal of respect for antidepressants; I think they can be enormously mighty tools toward recovery.