“The idea is that if you practice the Naikan part of Constructive Living, life becomes a series of small miracles, and you may start to notice everything that goes right in a typical life and not the few things that go wrong.”

“Life is such a miracle, a series of small miracles.It really is, if you learn how to look at it with the right perspective.”

“It’s easy to do right when everything goes right. But let everything go wrong, and see how difficult it becomes.”

“I have noticed that doing the sensible thing is only a good idea when the decision is quite small. For the life-changing things, you must risk it.”

“I think it is unnatural to think that there is such a thing as a blue-sky, white-clouded happy childhood for anybody. Childhood is a very, very tricky business of surviving it. Because if one thing goes wrong or anything goes wrong, and usually something goes wrong, then you are compromised as a human being. You're going to trip over that for a good part of your life.”

“After you find out all the things that can go wrong, your life becomes less about living and more about waiting.”