Character forms a life regardless of how obscurely that life is lived and how little light falls on it from the stars.

Instead of seeing depression as a dysfunction, it is a functioning phenomenon. It stops you cold, sets you down, makes you damn miserable.

I don't think anything changes until ideas change. The usual American viewpoint is to believe that something is wrong with the person.

Until the culture recognizes the legitimacy of growing down, each person in the culture struggles blindly to make sense of the darkness that the soul requires to deepen into life.

The circumstances, including my body and my parents, whom I may curse, are my soul's own choice and I do not understand this because I have forgotten

Not just any talk is conversation; not any talk raises consciousness. Good conversation has an edge: it opens your eyes to something, quickens your ears. And good conversation reverberates: it keeps on talking in your mind later in the day; the next day, you find yourself still conversing with what was said. That reverberation afterward is the very raising of consciousness; your mind's been moved. You are at another level with your reflections.

Our life is psychological, and the purpose of life is to make psyche of it, to find connections between life and soul.