“We are never responsible for another person’s abusive or toxic behaviour. We don’t “choose it” or “create it” … we didn’t “sign on for it in a previous life” and it’s not our “karma” coming to bite us on our ass-ets.”

“Everything that has happened to us up to this point is, in a sense, our history, yet it’s a total mysterious mystery. How can we diffuse the emotions? We do this by taking away the devotion to drama. All drama leads to more karma. Don’t be a karma farmer.”

“Accountability is the natural product of agency and is the basis of the plan of life. We are responsible for our own actions and accountable to God for what we choose to do with our lives. Life is God’s gift to us, and what we do with it is our gift to him.”

“All men and women are born, live suffer and die; what distinguishes us one from another is our dreams, whether they be dreams about worldly or unworldly things, and what we do to make them come about... We do not choose to be born. We do not choose our parents. We do not choose our historical epoch, the country of our birth, or the immediate circumstances of our upbringing. We do not, most of us, choose to die; nor do we choose the time and conditions of our death. But within this realm of choicelessness, we do choose how we live.”

“We can never know what to want, because, living only one life, we can neither compare it with our previous lives nor perfect it in our lives to come.”

“During all the time we were together, I don’t think I ever found out. But once I was with her, Ididn’t need to. We were both music-obsessed, each in our own way. If we didn’t entirely understandthe other person’s obsession, it didn’t matter, because we understood our own.”