So the greatest source of happiness is other people- and what does money do? It isolates us from other people. It enables us to build walls, literal and figurative, around ourselves. We move from a teeming college dorm to an apartment to a house, and if we're really wealthy, to an estate. We think we're moving up, but really we're walling off ourselves.

When you drink coffee, you become very focused, and in fact, the key to creative genius is to be defocused.

We can't love a place or a person if we always have one foot out the door.

That's why we feel so disoriented, irritated even, when these touchstones from our past are altered. We don't like it when our hometown changes, even in small ways. It's unsettling. The playground! It used to be right here, I swear. Mess with our hometown, and you're messing with our past, with who we are. Nobody likes that.

[Happiness is] a ghost, it’s a shadow. You can’t really chase it. It’s a by-product, a very pleasant side effect to a life lived well.

Joseph Campbell, who when asked what spiritual practice he followed said, "I underline books." Me too.

We help other people because we can, or because it makes us feel good, not because we're counting on some future payback. There is a word for this; love.