Well, if I'm only a result of past causes, then I'm a victim of those past causes. There is no deeper meaning behind things that gives me a reason to be here.

Loss means losing what was. We want to change but we don't want to lose. Without time for loss, we don't have time for soul.

Our lives are determined less by our childhood than by the traumatic way we have learned to remember our childhoods.

Teachers today can't take to a child.

Why do we focus so intensely on our problems? What draws us to them? Why are they so attractive? They have the magnet power of love: somehow we desire our problems; we are in love with them much as we want to get rid of them . . . Problems sustain us -- maybe that's why they don't go away. What would a life be without them? Completely tranquilized and loveless . . . There is a secret love hiding in each problem

We approach people the same way we approach our cars. We take the poor kid to a doctor and ask, "What's wrong with him, how much will it cost, and when can I pick him up?"

Depression opens the door to beauty of some kind.