Invest in the human family. Invest in people. Build a little community of those you love and who love you.

Life is a series of pulls back and forth. You want to do one thing, but you are bound to do something else.

My mother was French Protestant, and my father was Italian Catholic, and their union was an excess of God, guilt and sauce.

People are only mean when they're threatened, and that's what our culture does...And when you get threatened, you start looking out only for yourself. You start making money a god. It is all part of this culture.

Much of what we called "depression" was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly high or expecting treasures we weren't willing to work for.

It’s not just other people we need to forgive. We also need to forgive ourselves. For all the things we didn’t do. All the things we should have done. You can’t get stuck on the regrets of what should have happened. I always wished I had done more with my work; I wished I had written more books. I used to beat myself up over it. Now I see that never did any good. Make peace. You need to make peace with yourself and everyone around you.

When you look into your mother’s eyes, you know that is the purest love you can find on this earth.