What's wrong with living in a dream world? You have to wake up.

Every human being on the face of the earth has a steel plate in his head, but if you lie down now and then and get still as you can, it will slide open like elevator doors, letting in all the secret thoughts that have been standing around so patiently, pushing the button for a ride to the top. The real troubles in life happen when those hidden doors stay closed for too long.

As an adolescent, I went to charm school, where I learned to pour tea and relate to boys, which, as I recall, meant giving them the pickle jar to unscrew, whether it was too hard for me or not.

How could I choose someone who would force me to give up my own small reach for meaning? I chose myself, and without consolation.

I eventually found that the soul is more than an immortal commodity to win and save. It is the repository of the inner divine, the truest part of us.

It shocks me how I wish for...what is lost and cannot come back.

How often do we do that, he wondered--look at someone and fail to see what's really there?