“But if you can’t love your-self, you can never love others. And if you never overcome your lack of self- love, you will carry that problem into all your relationships. Plagued by rejection, you will experience conflict with others, you will struggle to set meaningful goals, and you will feel a vague uncertainty about what truly matters.”

“When people show you their boundaries ("I can't do this for you") you feel rejected...part of your struggle is to set boundaries to your own love. Only when you are able to set your own boundaries will you be able to acknowledge, respect and even be grateful for the boundaries of others.”

“When this life is over what will have mattered about your life is what other lives you touched, who did you love, who loved you. We show love when we walk in empathy toward others. It’s easy to have a love walk in your own culture, [but] can you show love in foreign environments or to people not of your ‘tribe’? That is our goal [and] it’s what defines and refines us”

“The trouble with you is that the only way you can communicate is through art. You’ve never learned to communicate your feelings to a man. You don’t even want to communicate in a relationship. You think that if you open up to love, you’ll lose your independence or your self-expression or creativity or whatever you call all that passionate, wonderful stuff that makes you feel alive inside.”

“All you need is already within you, only you must approach your self with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for your self, all I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect. Deny yourself nothing -- glue your self infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them; you are beyond.”

“If you have realistic ideals and can generally live up to them, your self-esteem will not be threatened. If your ideals are exaggerated and you cannot reach them, your good feelings from successes may be short lived, and you may feel that you are never good enough.The continued hope for the impossible, the expectation that you will or can be unconditionally loved and adored, is not facing reality but rather holding onto an idealized image of yourself and an idealized version of what others can provide. If this is the case, your sense of self may be threatened by shame and its resulting depression, or by feelings of inadequacy for not living up to your unrealistic ideals. A better understanding of shame may help you recognize your tendency to hide what you feel from yourself and others.”