Two things I do value a lot, intimacy and the capacity for joy, didn't seem to be on anyone else s list. I felt like the stranger in a strange land, and decided I'd better not marry the natives.

nobody means to get carried away in mediocrity, but it happens, it happens unless you think about everything you do, unless you make every choice the best one you know how to make.

Like most writers, we like to find what we know and pass it along to anyone who cares. When that's done, as soon as we've said the best we can say, there's nothing else about us that's remotely interesting to anybody else, and we go back behind the walls. We can be intimate in books, we can be intimate in talks, but then we need time to be alone.

Instead of our drab slogging forth and back to the fishing boats, there's reason to live! We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. We can learn to be free! we can learn to fly!

Don't turn away from possible futures before you're certain you don't have anything to learn from them.

The opposite of Loneliness is not Togetherness , It's Intimacy.

Pain and adversity are powerful vehicles to promote personal growth. Nothing helps you learn, grow, and evolve more quickly. Nothing offers you as big an opportunity to reclaim more of your authentic power as a person.