“Many people are in despair because their dreams didn’t come true, and they despair even more that they did not make them come true.”

There are borderlines and there are borderlines. Labels do violence to people. You can’t treat the label; you have to treat the person behind the label. (17)

Not to take possession of your life plan is to let your existence be an accident.

The more unlived your life, the greater your death anxiety.

I must stop him from being one of those who call themselves good because they have no claws.

I think we ripple on into others, just like a stone puts its ripples into a brook. That, for me, too, is a source of comfort. It kind of, in a sense, negates the sense of total oblivion.

We project ourselves into the future through our children; we grow rich, famous, ever larger; we develop compulsive protective rituals; or we embrace an impregnable belief in an ultimate rescuer.

Marriage and its entourage of possession and jealousy enslave the spirit.

If I had to pick out a therapist in a movie that I’d like to go see as a personal therapist, it would be Robin Williams in Goodwill Hunting.

I feel strongly, because a man who will himself die one day in the not to distant future and, also, as a psychiatrist who spent decades dealing with death anxiety, that confronting death allows us, not to open some noisome.

This is what makes us human. But it comes with a costly price: the wound of mortality. Our existence is forever shadowed by the knowledge that we will grow, blossom, and, inevitably, diminish and die.

The drive for power is not uncommonly motivated by this dynamic. One’s own fear and sense of limitation is avoided by enlarging oneself and one’s sphere of control.

There was a time in our lives when we were so close that nothing seemed to obstruct our friendship and brotherhood, and only a small footbridge separated us.

Your greatest instrument is you, yourself, and the work of self-understanding is endless. I’m still learning.

Life is a miserable thing. I have decided to spend my life thinking about it.

If people in their 20s had more death awareness, would that in fact temper their ambition or drive?

Psychotherapy is a cyclical process from isolation into relationship. It is cyclical because the patient, in terror of existential isolation, relates deeply and meaningfully to the therapist and then, strengthened by this encounter, is led back again to a confrontation with existential isolation.

A good umpire is the umpire you don’t even notice

You believe you know them, that you understand them, but their motives are always hidden from you, buried in their own hearts. You will never know them, but sometimes you decide to trust them.

Refinancing your mortgage usually makes sense if you can lower your interest rate by at least two points. But the most important question to ask yourself is, how long will it take you to break even?

Everybody knows that abstract art can be art, and most people know that they may not like it, even if they understand there’s another purpose to it.

The great art of life is sensation, to feel that we exist, even in pain.

Even more amazing: not the worst review the movie got.

You make me happy, even when you’re awful. I would rather be with you – even the you that you seem to think is diminished – than with anyone else in the world.

Don’t tell him ‘rock ‘n’ roll’ or they won’t even let you in the hotel.