Each person's only hope for improving his lot rests on recognizing the true nature of his or her basic personality, surrendering to it, and becoming who he or she really is.

Maintaining the illusion that I am in control is futile, lonely, and in the long run more always costly than the effort is worth.

But after a while, she began to experience the new reality of each person as being as strong and as weak as anyone else. Slowly, she learned that each of us grown-ups has as much and as little power as the other, and that we had best learn to take care of ourselves.(83)

Sometimes life seems like a poorly designed cage within which man has been sentenced to be free.

It is not possible to know how much is just enough, until we have experienced how much is more than enough. (64)

When a patient says he feels stuck and confused, and through good intentions he struggles to become loose and clear, he only remains chronically trapped in the mire of his own stubbornness. If instead he will go with where he is, only then is there hope. If he will let himself get deeply into the experience of being stuck, only then will he reclaim that part of himself that is holding him. Only if he will give up trying to control his thinking, and let himself sink into his confusion, only then will things become clear. (64)

In the long run we get no more than we have been willing to risk giving.