Conflict in close relationships is not only inevitable, it's essential. Intimacy connects people who are inevitably different.

If you're feeling abandoned by the world, interact with anyone you can.

The moment we begin tolerating meanness, in ourselves and others, we are using our authorial power in the service of wrongdoing. We have both the capacity and the obligation to do better.

Almost all my middle-aged and elderly acquaintances, including me, feel about 25, unless we haven't had our coffee, in which case we feel 107.

Ten bajillion product ads notwithstanding, your looks are another thing that's basically genetic.

Emotional discomfort, when accepted, rises, crests and falls in a series of waves. Each wave washes a part of us away and deposits treasures we never imagined. Out goes naivete, in comes wisdom; out goes anger, in comes discernment; out goes despair, in comes kindness. No one would call it easy, but the rhythm of emotional pain that we learn to tolerate is natural, constructive and expansive... The pain leaves you healthier than it found you.

My deep belief is that all of us have the same lifelong work: to learn honesty, courage, and love. To learn, in other words, how to be our best selves.