writers like Jack Kerouac (who called himself an “urban Thoreau”) set forth to redefine and rediscover ways to live in America without slogging through what Kerouac called the endless system of “work, produce, consume, work,...

But I love him.””So love him.””But I miss him.””So miss him. Send him love and light every time you think about him, and then drop it.

Loneliness watches and sights, then climbs into my bed and pulls the covers over… himself, fully dressed, shoes and all. He’s going to make me sleep with him again tonight, i just know it.

People think a soul mate is your perfect fit, and that’s what everyone wants. But a true soul mate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that is holding you back, the person...

What time has ever been a simple time for those who are living it?

… bel far niente has always been a cherished Italian ideal. The beauty of doing nothing is the goal of all your work, the final accomplishment for which you are most highly congratulated. The more...

I’ve come to believe that there exists in the universe something I call “The Physics of The Quest” — a force of nature governed by laws as real as the laws of gravity or momentum....

the great lack of parity between husbands and wives has always been spawned by the disproportionate degree of self-sacrifice that women are willing to make on behalf of those they love.

I’d learned enough from life’s experiences to understand that destiny’s interventions can sometimes be read as invitation for us to address and even surmount our biggest fears. It doesn’t take a great genius to recognize...

to travel is worth any cost or sacrifice.

The problem, simply put, is that we cannot choose everything simultaneously. So we live in danger of becoming paralyzed by indecision, terrified that every choice might be the wrong choice.

What’s more, I believe in argument and I even love it. Argument is our most steadfast pathway toward truth, for it is the only proven arbalest against superstitious thinking, or lackadaisical axioms.

Now that young girls like my twelve-year-old friend Mai are being exposed to modern Western women like me through crowds of tourists, they’re experiencing those first critical moments of cultural hesitation. I call this the...

I met an old lady once, almost a hundred years old, and she told me, ‘There are only two questions that human beings have ever fought over, all through history. How much do you love...

All I could say was, “I don’t know what to do.” I remember her taking me by the shoulders and looking me in the eye with a calm smile and saying simply, “Tell the truth,...

I couldn’t care less about evidence and proof and assurances. I just want God. I want God inside me. I want God to play in my bloodstream the way sunlight amuses itself on water.

Listen to the whispers or soon you will be listening to the screams.

This was not my moment to be seeking romance and (as day follows night) to further complicate my already knotty life. This was my moment to look for the kind of healing and peace that...

Dear Lord, please show me everything I need to understand about forgiveness and surrender

I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the sand exactly around the spot where you are standing right now. I was never not...

That family needs casseroles,” and then proceeded to organize the entire neighborhood into bringing that family dinner, in shifts, every single night, for an entire year. I do not know if my sister fully recognizes...

Ketut, why is life all crazy like this?” I asked my medicine man the next day…So what can we do about the craziness of the world?”Nothing.” Ketut laughed, but with a dose of kindness. “This...

Getting out of a marriage is rough, though, and not just for the legal / financial complications or the massive lifestyle upheaval. (As my friend Deborah once advised me wisely: “Nobody ever died from splitting...

Your emotions are the slaves to your thoughts, and you are the slave to your emotions.

I’m choosing happiness over suffering, I know I am. I’m making space for the unknown future to fill up my life with yet-to-come surprises.

Deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of sorrow, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way...

Your treasure – your perfection – is within you already. But to claim it, you must leave the busy commotion of the mind and abandon the desires of the ego and enter into the silence...

I was not rescued by a prince; I was the administrator of my own rescue.

When I get lonely these days, I think: 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....

Because I know something that you don’t know. I know that this is the worst experience of your life, but I also know that someday you’ll move past it and you’ll be fine. And helping...

Every intimacy carries secreted somewhere below its initial lovely surfaces, the ever-coiled makings of complete catastrophe.

I am more touched, still, that you are trying to understand – through rational thought – that which cannot be understood at all. The divine, as Boehme said, is unground, unfathomable, something outside the world...

This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.

Because the world is so corrupted, misspoken, unstable, exaggerated and unfair, one should trust only what one can experience with one’s own senses, and THIS makes the senses stronger in Italy than anywhere in Europe....

There’s a part of me which has always wanted to hear a man say, “Let me take care of you forever,” and I have never heard it spoken before. Over the last few years, I’d...

You need to learn how to select your thoughts just the same way you select your clothes every day. This is a power you can cultivate. If you want to control things in your life...

It may be that same-sex couples will save the institution of marriage.

Liz, you must be very polite with yourself when you are learning something new.

My restlessness makes me a far better day-to-day traveler than he will ever be. I am infinitely curious and almost infinitely patient with mishaps, discomforts, and minor disasters. So I can go anywhere on the...

This much I do know – I’m exhausted by the cumulative consequences of a lifetime of hasty choices and chaotic passions.

You’re wishin’ too much, baby. You gotta stop wearing your wishbone where your backbone oughtta be.

I also get that we women in particular must work very hard to keep our fantasies as clearly and cleanly delineated from our realities as possible, and that sometimes it can take years of effort...

If I love you, I will carry for you all your pain, I will assume for you all your debts (in every definition of the word), I will protect you from your own insecurity, I...

Man is a demon, man is a god. Both true.

In fact, it was all I could do to stop myself from saying, ‘I’ve always been a big fan of your work …

The resting place of the mind is the heart. The only thing the mind hears all day is clanging bells and noise and argument, and all it wants is quietude. The only place the mind...

Not town can live peacefully, whatever its laws,” Plato wrote, “when its citizens … do nothing but feast and drink and tire themselves out in the cares of love.”But is it such a bad thing...

The Yogic scriptures say that God responds to the sacred prayers and efforts of human beings in any way whatsoever that mortals choose to worship – just so long as those prayers are sincere.

What would I do if you never came here?’ But I was ALWAYS coming here. I thought about one of my favorite Sufi poems, which says that God long ago drew a circle in the...

But whenever I see it happen, I always want to say the same thing. Good luck. Because you still have a woman in front of you, my friend. And you are still a man. It’s...