If what I’ve written here ends up helping you, that’s great, and I will be glad. That would be a wonderful side effect. But at the end of the day, I do what I do because I like doing it.
If I'd had any way of knowing that things were- as Lily Tomlin once said- going to get a whole lot worse before they got worse, I'm not sure how I would have slept that night.
I'm just so weary, Vivian. But I love this kid so much, sometimes I think it will break me in half. Is that the dirty trick? Is this how they get mothers to ruin their lives for their children? By tri...
I was born into argument. Argument was my first nursemaid. Argument is my lifelong bedfellow. What’s more, I believe in argument and I even love it. Argument is our most steadfast pathway toward truth...
I wanted to be all Gandhi about this. I wanted to be all Nelson Mandela about this. Not realizing at the time that both Gandhi and Mandela were lawyers.
I noticed that my fear never changed, never delighted, never offered a surprise twist or an unexpected ending. My fear was a song with only one note—only one word, actually—and that word was STOP! My...
I like it when science and devotion find places of intersection.
I had long ago learned that when you are the giant, alien visitor to a remote and foreign culture it is sort of your job to become an object of ridicule. It’s the least you can do, really, as a polite...
I had always been taught that the pursuit of happiness was my natural (even national) birthright. It is the emotional trademark of my culture to seek happiness. Not just any kind of happiness, either,...
I had actively participated in every moment of the creation of this life–so why did I feel like none of it resembled me?
I got a mother who wasn't having it. She wasn't having a minute of my drama, which is probably the luckiest thing that ever happened to me... she was not about to raise a little candy ass. Not on her...
I even have a welcoming speech prepared for fear, which I deliver right before embarking upon any new project or big adventure. It goes something like this: Dearest Fear: Creativity and I are about to...
I especially love watching Marcus Aurelius fighting his perfectionism in order to get back to work on his writing, regardless of the results. Get a move on, he writes to himself, and don't worry wheth...
I didn't want to destroy anything or anybody. I just wanted to slip quietly out the back door, without causing any fuss or consequences, and then not stop running until I reached Greenland.
I can choose how I’m going to regard unfortunate circumstances in my life—whether I will see them as curses or opportunities (and on the occasions when I can’t rise to the most optimistic viewpoint, b...
I believe that we are half-blind and full of errors. I believe that we understand very little, and what we do understand is mostly wrong. I believe that life cannot be survived—that is evident!—but if...
I agree--the world isn't a nursery. But the very fact that this world is so challenging is exactly why you sometimes must reach out of its jurisdiction for help, appealing to a higher authority in ord...
Há uma piada italiana muito engraçada sobre um homem pobre que vai todos os dias à igreja rezar diante da estátua de um grande santo, implorando: «Querido santo, por favor, por favor, por favor... dá-...
He is only happy when he can maintain himself - mentally and spiritually - at the intersection between a vertical line and horizontal one, in a state of perfect balance. For this, he needs to know whe...
Go be whomever you want to be, then. Do whatever you want to do. Pursue whatever fascinates you and brings you to life.