Eat, Pray, Love

No matter how hard you work, you cannot stop getting old."

happiness is a stroke of luck, something that will maybe descend upon you like fine weather if you're fortunate enough

Javanese colonists brought their Hindu caste system with them to Bali, though caste divisions were never as brutally enforced here as they once were in India. Still, the Balinese recognize a complex social hierarchy (there are five divisions of Brahmans alone

And then there was David.

She shrugs: “Magari.”
Another untranslatable bit of Italian slang, meaning something between “hopefully” and “in your dreams, sucker.”

“So sadness is a place?” Giovanni asked.
“Sometimes people live there for years,” I said.

Learn your way around loneliness. Make a map of it. Sit with it, for once in your life. Welcome to the human experience. But never again use another person’s body or emotions as a scratching post for your own unfulfilled yearnings.

So a close friend, in Italian, is one you that can wear tightly, snug against your skin, and that is what my little Swedish friend Sofie is becoming to me.

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

When a friend complimented my new look, all I could say, grimly, was, “Operation Self-Esteem—Day Fucking One.”)