“You too are a work of art.”

Bobby and I were married in 1954 and by now we know that anger does not mean “I don’t love you” or “I want a divorce.” It means, “I am wounded and in need of love, and I feel safe telling you about it because you are my family.”

None of us are going to have perfect lives. Our own vision of what we think is good maybe different from what He [God] thinks. And we forget that. We think we know what’s best and we don’t.

What I learned was to live in my heart and to do what will make my happy, and that was not selfishness. It didn’t matter what job I took, my mother’s answer was, “Do what will make you happy.”

If you talk to your body, it will listen.

It can be tempting to blame others for our loss of direction. We get lots of information about life but little education in life from parents, teachers, and other authority figures who should know better from their experience. Information is about facts.

I had patients who didn’t die because they had too many pets to try to find homes for. It’s why women live longer than men with the same health problems.

You can’t control the world, but when you control your thoughts, you bring order.

What if Jesus was the only normal person who ever lived?

Be grateful simply for being alive. When you are grateful for life, pure and simple, your life becomes one you can be grateful for. That may strike you as circular or even backward logic, but your attitude really does have an effect on how things work out.

Hoping means seeing that the outcome you want is possible and then working for it.

We destroy ourselves when we stop feeling. If you bury your feelings within you, you become a graveyard.

To me, God is an intelligent, loving, conscious energy and why do I say that? Well you need energy to create. You have to have a source. It’s undifferentiated energy which has intelligence or it couldn’t create.

Education is about wisdom and the knowledge of how to love and survive.

Remember that an act of love always benefits at least two people.

You still won’t be perfect, but success isn’t about perfection-it is about authenticity. You are a success if you are being your real, authentic self.

You cannot fail at being yourself. A cat doesn’t try to be a tiger, and you shouldn’t try to be something you aren’t. You are a process, not a product. Your job is to discover what you are and create that creature.

All writing is communication; creative writing is communication through revelation-it is the Self-escaping into the open.

Despair is the price one pays for self-awareness. Look deeply into life, and you’ll always find despair.

self-pity is better than none.

If most of us remain ignorant of ourselves, it is because self-knowledge is painful and we prefer the pleasures of illusion.

Self-awareness is a supreme gift, a treasure as precious as life.

Humans, the only self-regarding animals, blessed or cursed with this torturing higher faculty, have always wanted to know why.

Well, guess what, I’m Cuban! And no self-respecting Cuban man of the era would let his wife work.

All these things I’ve written so much about. That’s why I’ve made such a practice really, over and over to hammer home the point of self-revelation and being more of yourself and showing yourself. Every book I write I want to get that in there.