“Go to other countries. Not a typical backpacking tour. Planned tourmeans you will hang with Americans on bikes and flirt with drunkGermans and someone will steal your Levi’s in the hostel and a guyfrom Poland will sock you in the face while bad techno playseverywhere and you will learn nothing except that your face hurts andnot everyone showers. Get into other cultures and talk politics andlove. Meeting other people is the only way to know if you believe whatyou believe cause it’s been handed to you, or if it really rings truein your heart.Getting lost should be seen as a sweet chance to be found.Remember, you belong everywhere.”

“Wait untila year from nowwhere you say,“Holy fuck,I can’t believe I was going to kill myself before I etcetera’d…before I went skinny dipping in Tennessee,made my own IPA,tried out for a game show,rode a camel drunk,learned to waltz with clumsy old people,photographed electric jellyfish,built a sailboat from trash,taught someone how to read,ect. Ect. Etc.”The red washingdown the bathtubcan’t change the color of the seaat all.”

“Courage is a decision you make to act in a way that works through your own fear for the greater good as opposed to pure self-interest. Courage means putting at risk your immediate self-interest for what you believe is right.”

“One of the problems with all of this is that not all narratives are equal. Imagine, to take a silly example, that someone told you story after story extolling the virtues of eating dog shit. You've been told these stories since you were a child. You believe them. You eat dog shit hotdogs, dog shit ice cream, General Tso's dog shit. Sooner or later, if you are exposed to some other foods, you might figure out that dog shit really doesn't taste good. Or if you cling too tightly to these stories (or if your enculturation is so strong that dog shit actually does taste good to you), the diet might make you sick or kill you. To make this example a little less silly, substitute the word pesticides for dog shit. Or, for that matter, substitute Big Mac, Whopper, or Coca Cola.”

“If you believe in your story, someone else will!”

“I can not love you until you can love our beautiful waitress in the simple way that I do.”

“Other people's opinion of you does not have to become your reality.”