By unnerving definition, anything that the heart has chosen for its own mysterious reasons it can always unchoose later—again, for its own mysterious reasons.

There is so much about my fate that I cannot control, but other things do fall under the jurisdiction. I can decide how I spend my time, whom I interact with, whom I share my...

So this was the Ashram’s final joke on me? Once I had learned to accept my loud, chatty, social nature and fully embrace my inner Key Hostess – only then could I become The Quiet...

So be lonely, Liz. Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience.

Every word was a singing sparrow, a magic trick, a truffle for me. The words made me laugh in delight.

You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.

I keep remembering one of my Guru’s teachings about happiness. She says that people universally tend to think that happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather...

My heart skipped a beat and then flat-out tripped over itself and fell on its face. Then my heart stood up, brushed itself off, took a deep breath and announced: “I want a spiritual teacher.

Italian men are beautiful in the same way as French women, which is to say – no detail spared in the quest for perfection.

I do forget sometimes how much it means for certain men—for certain people—to be able to provide their loved ones with material comforts and protection at all times. I forget how dangerously reduced some men...

Please go to this pizzeria. Order the margherita pizza with double mozzarella. If you do not eat this pizza when you are in Naples, please lie to me and tell me that you did.

This is what I find myself writing to myself on the page:I’m here. I love you. I don’t care if you need to stay up crying all night long. I will stay with you. If...

The emotional place where a marriage begins is not nearly as important as the emotional place where a marriage finds itself toward the end, after many years of partnership.

The Buddha taught that most problems – if only you give them enough time and space – will eventually wear themselves out.

To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow – this is a human offering that can border on miraculous.

Hey! You know her! That’s a friend of yours!” And I actually ran forward toward my own reflection with a smile, ready to welcome that girl whose name I had lost but whose face was...

I have good idea, for if you meet some person from different religion and he want to make argument about God. My idea is, you listen to everything this man say about God. Never argue...

In a world of disorder and disaster and fraud, sometimes only beauty can be trusted. Only artistic excellence is incorruptible. Pleasure cannot be bargained down. And sometimes the meal is the only currency that is...

To feel physically comfortable with someone else’s body is not a decision you make. It has very little thing to do with how two people think or act or talk or even look. The mysterious...

But it is my understanding that the health of the planet is affected by the health of every individual on it. As long as even two souls are locked in conflict, the whole of the...

Traveling-to-a-place energy and living-in-a-place energy are two fundamentally different energies

We search for happiness everywhere, but we are like Tolstoy’s fabled beggar who spent his life sitting on a pot of gold, under him the whole time. Your treasure–your perfection–is within you already. But to...

Back off, Jack-I got four brothers protecting my ass,’ and I just rode on by him

meditation vs prayer = listening vs talking

Zen masters say you cannot see your reflection in running water, only in still water.

The gods are fond of the cryptic and dislike the evident.

I believe in a magnificent God

So I stood up and did a handstand on my Guru’s roof, to celebrate the notion of liberation. I felt the dusty tiles under my hands. I felt my own strength and balance. I felt...

we must take care of our families wherever we find them.

Il bel far niente means ‘the beauty of doing nothing’… [it] has always been a cherished Italian ideal. The beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work, the final accomplishment for which...

Is this lifetime supposed to be only about duty?

The Bhagavad Gita—that ancient Indian Yogic text—says that it is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection. So now I have started living my...

You have no idea how strong my love is!

Never forget that once upon a time, in an unguarded moment, you recognized yourself as a friend.

Sometimes life is too hard to be alone, and sometimes life is too good to be alone.

As I focus on diligent joy, I also keep remembering a simple idea my friend Darcey told me once — that all the sorrow and trouble of this world is caused by unhappy people. Not...

I love my pizza so much, in fact, that I have come to believe in my delirium that my pizza might actually love me, in return. I am having a relationship with this pizza, almost...

I would like to be like Rome when I am an old lady.

What worked yesterday doesn’t always work today.

Until-as often happened during those first months travel, whenever I would feel such happiness-my guilt alarm went off. I heard my ex-husband’s voice speaking disdainfully in my ear: So this is what you gave up...

We must all get our hearts broken sometimes. This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something

You can let yourself off the hook anytime you want, Liz. That’s the divine contract of a little something we call free will.

ceremony is essential to humans: It’s a circle that we draw around important events to separate the momentous from the ordinary. And ritual is a sort of magical safety harness that guides us from one...

Someday you’re gonna look back on this moment of your life as such a sweet time of grieving. You’ll see that you were in mourning and your heart was broken, but your life was changing…

Ruin is a gift. Ruin is the road to transformation.

God dwells within you, as you.

As someone who struggles with anxiety and cowardice, as we all do, I’m profoundly inspired by. . . . full-on commitment to wonder, to wonder as a response to anguish or difficulty. It makes everything...

I have never felt the need to invent a world beyond this world, for this world has always seemed large and beautiful enough for me. I have wondered why it is not large and beautiful...

What do I believe that I deserve in this life?

I had long ago learned that when you are the giant, alien visitor to a remote and foreign culture it is sort of your job to become an object of ridicule. It’s the least you...