“Holly, I understand that you are upset because Gemma pulled down your ants, but why did you think pouring motor oil inside her backpack is the way to solve the problem?”

“It is the mind’s job to protect and take care of you, to solve your problems and make sure you’re safe. So, if you feel a surge of emotional upset, it moves into action, trying to help, looking for the source of the upset—for the problems—and generating solutions.Under these conditions, the key to getting the mind to go on standby—to stilling the mind’s compulsive thinking—lies in recognizing, accepting, and working with the emotional upset. Once you address the emotional undercurrent, once it is no longer churning inside you, the mind can switch off and quite literally leave you in peace.”

“Lying is for the weak-minded. If you can’t think of a truthful way to solve your problems, you’re not thinking hard enough.”

“You could put your confusion and upset and worries into whatever book you were reading. You could sort of set them down in there, and you could come out with your head on a little straighter. I don't why stories worked that way, but they did.”

“I do understand why a desperate engineer still use a hammerto solve a hard problem. I think, that made him more humane.”

“You are not broken. You are not a problem to be solved. Solving your “problem”, whatever you perceive your problem or problems to be, is not the key to happiness.”