If we don't change, we don't grow. If we don't grow, we aren't really living.

Whether one has natural talent or not, any learning period requires the willingness to suffer uncertainty and embarrassment.

You may never know when things start to go bad, but when things are worse you know it.

In my memoir, I admit that I've been as fearful of success as of failure. In fact, when 'Passages' was published, I so dreaded bad reviews that I ran away to Italy with a girlfriend and our children to hide out.

The present never ages. Each moment is like a snowflake, unique, unspoiled, unrepeatable, and can be appreciated in its surprisingness.

The work of adult life is not easy. As in childhood, each step presents not only new tasks of development but requires a letting go of the techniques that worked before. With each passage some magic must be given up, some cherished illusion of safety and comfortably familiar sense of self must be cast off, to allow for the greater expansion of our distinctiveness.

A restless vitality wells up as we approach 30.