“I’m sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things.”

Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I’m not living.

It was not the feeling of completeness I so needed, but the feeling of not being empty.

I didn’t feel empty. I wished I’d felt empty. … I wanted to be empty like an overturned pitcher. But I was full like a stone.

My life story is the story of everyone I’ve ever met.

The meaning of my thoughts started to float away from me, like leaves that fall from a tree into a river, I was the tree, the world was the river.

My point is that there are a lot of forces, like the media and the general political rhetoric tells us we should have more. That we should do better than our parents and have a bigger house or a better car.

If the thrill of hunting were in the hunt, or even in the marksmanship, a camera would do just as well.

People with nothing to declare carry the most.

Do you eat chicken because you are familiar with the scientific literature on them and have decided that their suffering doesn’t matter, or do you do it because it tastes good?

So many people enter and leave your life! Hundreds of thousands of people! You have to keep the door open so they can come in! But it also means you have to let them go!

Silently the animal catches our glance. The animal looks at us, and whether we look away or not, we are exposed. Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something.

Writers now are putting total faith in designers at Apple and Amazon. It’s almost like a race-car driver having no input into how cars are designed.

Everything else happened – why not the things that could have?

Whether we change our lives or do nothing, we have responded. To do nothing is to do something.

Why does watching a dog be a dog fill one with happiness?

There are still many different ways to get stuck, existentially stuck. Feeling like, “This is worthless. I’m wasting my time, and I would be wasting the time of someone who tried to read this.” It happens all the time.

Words aren’t enough but they are all I have to hold on to right now to keep from falling and near hitting bottom.

Sometimes you have to let go of others so you can better hold on to yourself.

As I hold on to pain, I think of you. And with hope, I smile,  maybe one day this heaviness will leave you too.

The true leader is a different sort; he seeks effective activity which has a truly beneficient purpose. He inspires others to follow in his wake, and holding aloft the torch of wisdom, leads the way for society to realize its genuinely great aspirations.

Don’t hold onto anything so tightly that Jesus can’t take it from you.

If you’re not okay, you might as well not pretend you are, especially since life has a way of holding us down until we utter that magic word: help! That’s when angels rush to your side.

Why do we hold onto negativity? For some reason, we believe that others are affected by our experience of remaining upset, hurt or angry. Holding on to pain, anger, guilt or shame is the glue that binds us to the situation we want to escape.

Some of us think holding on makes us strong; but sometimes it is letting go.