“The single most important thing [you can do] is to shift [your] internal stance from "I understand" to "Help me understand." Everything else follows from that. . . . Remind yourself that if you think you already understand how someone feels or what they are trying to say, it is a delusion. Remember a time when you were sure you were right and then discovered one little fact that changed everything. There is always more to learn.”

“What I mean is that if you really want to understand something, the best way is to try and explain it to someone else. That forces you to sort it out in your own mind. And the more slow and dim-witted your pupil, the more you have to break things down into more and more simple ideas. And that’s really the essence of programming. By the time you’ve sorted out a complicated ideainto little steps that even a stupid machine can deal with, you’ve certainly learned something about it yourself. The teacher usually learns more than the pupil. Isn’t that true?”

“Try saying this: 'What's true for me today is that I have angry feelings concerning what I heard you say when you said what you said. It reminds me of what my mother said when she said what she said, and that hurts me so that's where I'm at with this, and it's not all right with me for today.' This should help to avoid a lot of communication problems.”

“It was pivotal in making you but you don't remember it. Or do you? Do we understand the events that make us who we are? Do we understand the factors that make us do the things we do?”

“Follow your dreams and always remember, sometimes you must soar through the fog and clouds to discover the rainbow.”

“Interviewer: The other day, when we first talked, you said that you felt that, when you were writing, you were often following invisible patterns.Stone: I don't see them so much as hear them, and I know that a poem will happen and later I will look at it, and say: Wow, where did that come from? how did I do that? I didn't set out to do that, but the neural connections are so fast, the body, the self is so slow, (laughs) that you're kind of astonished. It's odd.”

“Not belonging is a terrible feeling. It feels awkward and it hurts, as if you were wearing someone else's shoes.”