“We spend a lot of time worrying about what other people are thinking, concerned that they can tell we are freaking out inside, feel underprepared, or don’t know what we’re talking about. Most of the time, people are so preoccupied with some combination of the same fears that they don’t have enough time left to psychoanalyze a person they just met who replied, “Thanks, you too!” when they’ve said “Enjoy your latte.” You have dodged a bullet, and in fact the bullet doesn’t exist at all. Everyone is awkward. Everyone is scared. Everyone is going to die eventually. Everyone just wants to make some friends and memories before that happens. Everyone is trying to figure it out.”
Source: You Are Here (For Now): A Guide to Finding Your Way
“The mirror, window, and wall are metaphors for all those tactics we use to hide the lie that we believe is the truth: the false self. Each of these elements are the persona, the mask we may be wearing, playing a character, reading a script assigned to us. This book is a wake-up call that personal transformation is possible.”
Source: The Mirror, the Window, and the Wall: The Life-Changing Power of Finding Your True Self
“I suspect there is a part of each of us looking for recognition. Looking to be seen as we are--not the things we have done or failed to do--but for our essence. A friend who says, "Oh, I know you. I see you. And what I see is good.”
Source: As You Are: Meditations on Self and Other
“Safetyism be damned. Risk! Take the leaps you need to. Feel the heat you dread. Look into the light and move forward without fragelizing yourself and others. The hallmark of the change that is desired is that it requires the giving of oneself to the uncertain present, the unknown tomorrow.”
Source: As You Are: Meditations on Self and Other
“I am not
What you intend me to be.”
Source: Duende
“I listen to myself: this kind of listening is both tedious and courageous.”
“Love is more than a cultural ideal; it is a social foundation for the self. Yet, the cultural resources that make it constitutive of the self have been depleted.”
Source: Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation
“I stared into his handsome face and let those feelings overwhelm me and in that fleeting time I felt the ghost of our emotional connection. It was just a mere whisper, like a scent on the breeze that blows past you too quickly, bringing with it a memory of something you can’t quite grasp. I wasn’t sure if it was a trick of the light, a flicker of something real, or something I fabricated, but it captured all of my attention.”
“When, getting too used to ourselves, we begin to loathe ourselves, we soon realize that we are worse off, that self-hatred actually strengthens self-attachment.”
Source: The Trouble with Being Born
“Never really either private or public, the modern self establishes its value through processes that are at once psychological and sociological, private and
public, emotional and ritualistic. Clearly, then, in modern erotic/romantic relationships what is at stake are the self, its emotions, interiority, and, mostly, the way these are recognized (or fail to be recognized) by others.”
Source: Why Love Hurts: A Sociological Explanation