But Faye’s opinion is that sometimes a crisis is not really a crisis at all—just a new beginning. Because one thing she’s learned through all this is that if a new beginning is really new, it will feel like a crisis. Any real change should make you feel, at first, afraid. If you’re not afraid of it, then it’s not real change.

Sometimes we’re so wrapped up in our own story that we don’t see how we’re supporting characters in someone else’s.

Because if you see people as enemies or obstacles or traps, you will be at constant war with them and with yourself. Whereas if you choose to see people as puzzles, and if you see yourself as a puzzle, then you will be constantly delighted, because eventually, if you dig deep enough into anybody, if you really look under the hood of someone’s life,

He feels hollow. Gutted. Why don’t any of these people notice him? He longs for someone in the crowd to see the haunted expression he’s sure is playing all over his face right now and come up to him and say, You seem to be experiencing overwhelming pain, how can I help you? He wants to be seen, wants his hurt acknowledged. Then he recognizes this

“What’s true? What’s false? In case you haven’t noticed, the world has pretty much given up on the old Enlightenment idea of piecing together the truth based on observed data. Reality is too complicated and scary for that. Instead, it’s way easier to ignore all data that doesn’t fit your preconceptions and believe all data that does. I believe what

Will she ever understand this? Who knows. Seeing ourselves clearly is the project of a lifetime.

Sometimes what we avoid most is not pain but mystery.

The only thing less popular than the war in those days was the antiwar movement.

She’d decided that about eighty percent of what you believe about yourself when you’re twenty turns out to be wrong. The problem is you don’t know what your small true part is until much later.