It was not fun to walk around with my ghosts, despite what my positive memories wanted me to believe. I think this is because inherent in “revisiting” is the palpable reality that everything ends, the reminder that soon the way you are experiencing your present moment will be the past; it too will end.

She’s modeling radical self-acceptance on the world’s largest stage, giving the audience a space to revisit their own joy or pain, once dismissed or forgotten.

Here’s the thing when you hang out with writers: We pay attention. We write things down. Much of what I write about are my observations. I always say I don’t have to make things up. I just need to pay attention.

Like Diana, Princess of Wales, whose royal status, beauty and untimely death made her into a legend, Ms. Bessette Kennedy exists less as a person than an idea. Because she was so notoriously private, because she married into a family that had already colonized part of the public imagination, and because our memories of her are essentially preserved... See more

Schopenhauer loved metaphor, and his counsel starts with the example of a mason: The man is “employed on the building of a house” but “may be quite ignorant of its general design.” Because of this arrangement, Schopenhauer suggested, the mason was stuck in the daily details of his work instead of seeing it as part of a grand design. And so it is wi... See more

Making ceramics requires patience and is an exercise in delayed gratification (or dissatisfaction). There are so many ways to fuck something up, so many stages to the process, and entering that cycle of hope, expectation, and either failure and trying again or ecstatic satisfaction added a new dimension to the rhythms of my life.

Leading from good to great does not mean coming up with the answers and then motivating everyone to follow your messianic vision. It means having the humility to grasp the fact that you do not yet understand enough to have the answers and then to ask the questions that will lead to the best possible insights.

It’s so strange how we’re able to carry forward this mystery of personal identity even when our present selves are so different from our future selves and from our past selves most of all. I think a lot about this question of, what is a person? Am I the same person as my childhood self? Sure, we share the same body, but even that body is so differe... See more

Do not send me anything longer than you would send to a crush. Some people email me six-paragraph essays about the time they saved a cat from a tree.

I find the most effective way to get someone's attention is to simply give, just like in dating. Hey, I noticed that you read this book on your website. I think you'd like this book too; it's pretty sh... See more