“You make some big grandoise decision about what you need to do, or who you need to be, and then circumstances arise that immediately reveal to you how little you understood about yourself.”

“You've got the wrong criteria." Huh?" You need to make more intellectual decisions, fewer emotional ones..." 'Decisions' came out a bit slurred. What the hell are you talking about?" You need to go for someone who won't let you down." How are you supposed to know if someone's going to let you down or not?”

“Not making a decision is the worst thing you can do. So long as you feel you made the right decision based on the information you had at that time, there's no need to fret about it. If it fails, you'll know what to do next time.”

“You know, you make a lot of decisions in life, little ones, big ones, but some decisions you will never forget.”

“When you believe without knowing you believe that you are damaged at your core, you also believe that you need to hide that damage for anyone to love you. You walk around ashamed of being yourself. You try hard to make up for the way you look, walk, feel. Decisions are agonizing because if you, the person who makes the decision, is damaged, then how can you trust what you decide? You doubt your own impulses so you become masterful at looking outside yourself for comfort. You become an expert at finding experts and programs, at striving and trying hard and then harder to change yourself, but this process only reaffirms what you already believe about yourself -- that your needs and choices cannot be trusted, and left to your own devices you are out of control (p.82-83)”

“You understand it's not a matter of strategy. I'm not talking about secrets or deceptions. I'm talking about being yourself. If you reveal everything, bare every feeling, ask for understanding, you lose something crucial to your sense of yourself. You need to know things the others don't know. It's what no one knows about you that allows you to know yourself.”