We proceed by doubt, by trial and error, by resisting the impulse to lunge after certainty.

People don't mind being in prison as long as no one else is free. But stage a jailbreak, and everybody else freaks out.

There's no doubt about it: fun people are fun. But I finally learned that there is something more important, in the people you know, than whether they are fun. Thinking about those friends who had given me so much pleasure but who had also caused me so much pain, thinking about that bright, cruel world to which they'd introduced me, I saw that there's a better way to value people. Not as fun or not fun, or stylish or not stylish, but as warm or cold, generous or selfish. People who think about others and people who don't. People who know how to listen, and people who only know how to talk.

We proceed by doubt, by trial and error, by resisting the impulse to lunge after certainty.

Don't play it safe. Resist the seductions of the cowardly values our society has come to prize so highly: comfort, convenience, security, predictability, control. These, too, are nets. Above all, resist the fear of failure. Yes, you will make mistakes. But they will be your mistakes, not someone else's. And you will survive them, and you will know yourself better for having made them, and you will be a fuller and a stronger person.

Life, if you live it right, keeps surprising you, and the thing that keeps surprising you the most…is yourself

People’s stories are the most personal thing they have, and paying attention to those stories is just about the most important thing you can do for them.