“It's amazing that someone who knows so much about the human body can know so little about people. I think it's time we laid all our stars out on the table.”

“Reading all my old love letters was disorienting. You remember thinking the thoughts and writing the words but, man, you can't TOUCH those feelings. Its like they belonged to someone else. Someone you don't even know. I'm aware, in an intellectual way. That I felt all those things about him, but this emotions are far away now.What's so strange to me is that I can't even force my heart back to that place where I felt that all consuming passion. That makes me feel distant from myself. Who WAS I then? Will I ever be able to get back to that place? Reading the letters again made me wonder: Which is the real me? The one who saw the world in that emotionally saturated way, or the me who sees it the way I do now?”

“This is in the natural order of things--the time of life we've now entered. The afternoon, as Jung called it. Thoroughly unprepared we take the step into the afternoon of life. Are we unprepared simply because preparation is not possible? ... We learn--if we are lucky we learn--as we go.... we are in the center of the stream. Much has already happened, and has formed the shape of our lives as surely as water shapes rock. Much lies ahead of us. We can't see what's coming. We can't know it. All we have is our hope that all will be well, and our knowledge that it won't always be so. We live in the space between this hope and this knowledge....Life keeps coming at us. Fleeing it is pointless, as is fighting. What I have begun to learn is that there is value in simply standing there--this too--whether the sun is shining, or the wind whipping all around. [pp.239-240]”

“I don't know you. I'll give you that very easily. I DON'T know you. I only know things about you, the colour of your hair, the shape of your shoulders, the pools of brown eye, very seductive. I know your temperament. I know some of your expressions. I have a collection of words written by you. You share a few ideas. You use too many adjectives. But I don't know anything about who, exactly, you are, in fact.”

“I'm thinking about past events. I'm interested in recall, exact recall, of what was said, who said it and to whom. I want to know the truth, undistorted by time and revision and wishes and regrets.”

“According to ayurveda, we become what we surround ourselves with. And so it stands to reason that we have to be discerning about what we surround ourselves with." Steve Cope [p. 85]”

“Maybe you know something about young people, and maybe you don't. I, having been one myself once upon a time, know a few things about them. One thing I know is that if you don't want one to do something - for example, go into a room where there's a portrait of an unbearably beautiful princess- saying "It might cost you your life" is about the worst thing you can possibly say. Because then that's all that young person will want to do. I mean, why didn't Johannes say something else? Like, "It's a broom closet. Why? you want to see a broom closet?" Or, "It's a fake door, silly. For decoration." Or even, "It's the ladies' bathroom, Your Majesty. Best not go poking your head in there.”