One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is to teach us how to suffer more successfully.

You normally have to be bashed about a bit by life to see the point of daffodils, sunsets and uneventful nice days.

Do you love me enough that I may be weak with you? Everyone loves strength, but do you love me for my weakness? That is the real test.

The challenge for a human now is to be more interesting to another than his or her smartphone.

There is no such thing as work-life balance. Everything worth fighting for unbalances your life.

Intimacy is the capacity to be rather weird with someone - and finding that that's ok with them.

Anyone who isn't embarrassed of who they were last year probably isn't learning enough.

Don't despair: despair suggests you are in total control and know what is coming. You don't - surrender to events with hope.

One of the better guarantors of ending up in a good relationship: an advanced capacity to be alone.

To one's enemies: "I hate myself more than you ever could.

The only people we can think of as normal are those we don't yet know very well.

It is what it is because you let it be so.

You’re always making up stuff from the past, ” she said. “And the stuff you imagine is always better than the stuff that actually happened.

Thinking is contagious … so choose whom you surround yourself with carefully! Or at least take precautions so as not to infect yourself with other people’s thinking!

You can do a lot with diplomacy, but with diplomacy backed up by force you can get a lot more done.

I love pitting people against each other. My whole life is based on that. It brings out the best in people and the worst in people. If the worst comes out, you don't want them working for you.

Feminism has led the way in demystifying personal relations, forcefully insisting they are political to the core.

Do I really look like a guy with a plan?

I always felt an outsider.

Instead of seeing these children for the blessings that they are, we are measuring them only by the standard of whether they will be future deficits or assets for our nation's competitive needs.

Any political historian can give innumerable examples of one percenters who have gone on to success, maybe even Bill Clinton himself?