The truth of people is that we are neither dogs nor cats, but people. Still, Jung said we each embody both animus and anima. My observation is that we humans, each and every one of us, also contain aniwoof and animeow.

Does power invariably corrupt? I don’t think so. But it does generate a sort of gravitational field around itself that can distort reality, if you aren’t careful.

The stories we choose to tell ourselves shape the character of the world we live in.

It’s not that having secrets is terrible. It’s that life can feel so terribly lonely when you think you have to hide who you are.

I love to read great mysteries, in part for the language — and in this case, for the pure inspiration.

What is it we love so much about good mysteries? Perhaps it is that they echo what we ourselves are doing here in this life.

If you had the chance to talk to your nineteen-year-old self, what would you say?

Each time I woke up in a new career, it felt as if I’d stepped out of the room for a moment, only to come back in and find it completely rearranged, with all different furniture. So what was “me” — the stuff in the room, or the empty room itself?

He wasn’t one of us, exactly. (He was a grownup, after all, and we were all teenagers.) But we knew, somehow, that he spoke for us.

Call it joy, call it flow, call it being carried away like a feather in wind … whatever you want to call it, I think it makes you ageless.