Our sadness starts to seem like a personal curse rather than what it more fairly always is: an inevitable feature of being alive.

Small household tasks offer us a metaphor for the sort of fixing we’re interested in but can’t yet quite manage inside ourselves. They give us the courage to imagine a day when we might be as tidy inside our minds as the linen cupboard outside currently is—thanks to what we did all afternoon.

A well-functioning mind recognizes the futility and cruelty of constantly finding fault with its own nature.

Being emotionally neglected by a distracted parent can instil a lasting sense of worthlessness which no amount of later attention or fame can easily contradict. Fear of a volatile parent’s temper can mold a whole personality in the direction of meekness and compliance. The

We might choose to live outside a large metropolis, not to push ourselves forward for promotion, to avoid the limelight, and to do a satisfactory but undramatic kind of work. We can discover the subtle greatness of a life in which we exercise our virtues on a domestic canvas, in which we do not seek to be known by people we don’t ourselves know and

If we do not allow ourselves frequent occasions to bend, we will be at far greater risk of one day fatefully snapping.

In the ruins, we may be able to ask ourselves new questions: What do I actually want to do? Whose opinion do I really care about? We’ll have slain the dragon of prestige and may now be ready to live on our own terms for the first time.

need you to accept—often and readily—the possibility that you might be at fault, without this feeling to you like the end of the world. You have to allow that I can have a legitimate criticism and still love you. I need you to be undefensive. I need you to own up to what you are embarrassed or awkward about in yourself. I need you to know how to ac

miraculous: that they could be loved without prizes, that true love isn’t about impressing or intimidating someone, that an adult can love another adult a little like a good parent loves their child: not because of anything they have done, but simply and poignantly just because they exist.