The whole culture is under terrible pressure and fraught with worry. It's hard to get out of that box. That's the dominant situation all over the world.

Just stop for a minute and you'll realize you're happy just being.

In the past, friendship was a huge thing. But it's hard for us to think of friendship as a calling, because it's not a vocation.

It's very hard to know what wisdom is

In the history of the treatment of depression, there was the dunking stool, purging of the bowels of black bile, hoses, attempts to shock the patient. All of these represent hatred or aggression towards what depression represents in the patient.

If there were a god of New York, it would be the Greek's Hermes, the Roman's Mercury. He embodies New York qualities: the quick exchange, the fastness of language and style, craftiness, the mixing of people and crossing of borders, imagination.

I am not caused by my history-my parents, my childhood and development. These are mirrors in which I may catch glimpses of my image.