How do you stop longing for what you absolutely know you can't get? Which really means: How do you absolutely know you can't-and won't-get it, not ever? How do you pinch out that wisp of feeble, ruthless hope?

It feels like people talk a lot, in their relationships and in therapy. But my family wasn't like that. My dad wasn't and I wasn't. Things were said, but via the language of action.

My dad felt pretty strongly that I know about the basic workings of a plane and so he taught me how to read and set the instruments, as well as the basics of taking off and landing.

The reason I could fit in with so many different kinds of people was that I had no self. And then the problem is, if you don't have a self, how can you be with other people? Who the hell are you with them?

Resisting and avoiding pain sucks energy-and time. The more you let yourself feel those minute-and-a-half hells, the quicker you'll start feeling those minute-and-a-half happinesses.

After the age of seven, I began living between my dad in Alaska and my mother in Baltimore. Every three or four months, I would fly the 5,000 miles between the two. And having grown up in Alaska, Baltimore was astonishing.

Most dreams are also part reality (otherwise we wouldn’t believe them), and reality happens to be a condition that gives you plenty of chances through your life to rise to - no, soar through - the occasion.