“Reading his autobiography many years later, I was astonished to find that Edward since boyhood had—not unlike Isaiah Berlin—often felt himself ungainly and ill-favored and awkward in bearing. He had always seemed to me quite the reverse: a touch dandyish perhaps but—as the saying goes—perfectly secure in his masculinity. On one occasion, after lunch in Georgetown, he took me with him to a renowned local tobacconist and asked to do something I had never witnessed before: try on a pipe. In case you ever wish to do this, here is the form: a solemn assistant produces a plastic envelope and fits it over the amber or ivory mouthpiece. You then clamp your teeth down to feel if the fit and weight are easy to your jaw. If not, then repeat with various stems until your browsing is complete. In those days I could have inhaled ten cigarettes and drunk three Tanqueray martinis in the time spent on such flaneur flippancy, but I admired the commitment to smoking nonetheless. Taking coffee with him once in a shopping mall in Stanford, I saw him suddenly register something over my shoulder. It was a ladies dress shop. He excused himself and dashed in, to emerge soon after with some fashionable and costly looking bags. Mariam, he said as if by way of explanation, has never worn anything that I have not bought for her. On another occasion in Manhattan, after acting as a magnificent, encyclopedic guide around the gorgeous Andalusia (Al-Andalus) exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, he was giving lunch to Carol and to me when she noticed that her purse had been lost or stolen. At once, he was at her service, not only suggesting shops in the vicinity where a replacement might be found, but also offering to be her guide and advisor until she had selected a suitable new sac à main. I could no more have proposed myself for such an expedition than suggested myself as a cosmonaut, so what this says about my own heterosexual confidence I leave to others.”
“To have self confidence is great, but to maintain self confidence is even greater”
“A competitive and insecure woman will tell you that “true love” is never giving up on someone you re in love with. A confident and spiritual woman knows that “moving on” doesn’t mean you never loved someone. She realizes that letting go is what God needs her to do because both your happiness and hers requires taking different journeys for spiritual growth. Letting go is sometimes the hardest thing, but it is the most “real love” you will ever experience.”
“No matter what a woman looks like, if she s confident, she s sexy”
“Why should I care what other people think of me? I am who I am. And who I wanna be.”
“To us — richer and cleverer than everyone else!”
“Piper had a new entry in her top-ten list of Times Piper Felt Useless. Fighting Shrimpzilla with a dagger and a pretty voice? Not so effective.”
“Humans punish themselves endlessly for not being what they believe they should be. They become very self-abusive, and they use other people to abuse themselves as well.”
“My self-confidence can be measured out in teaspoons mixed into my poetry, and it still always tastes funny in my mouth.”
“How we love others is affected by how we love ourselves, and for the first time in a long time, I was whole.”
“Believe in yourself up here and it will make you stronger than you could ever imagine.”
“Her grandmother had once told her that one of life s best lessons was not being afraid to look foolish -- to just ask the question.”
“... I am done being in love with you. Why? I am in love with someone else. Someone who needs it more than you. Who? Me.”
“Noble and great. Courageous and determined. Faithful and fearless. That is who you are and who you have always been. And understanding it can change your life, because this knowledge carries a confidence that cannot be duplicated any other way.”
“In the darkest hours we must believe in ourselves.”
“Clearly recognizing what is happening inside us, and regarding what we see with an open, kind and loving heart, is what I call Radical Acceptance. If we are holding back from any part of our experience, if our heart shuts out any part of who we are and what we feel, we are fueling the fears and feelings of separation that sustain the trance of unworthiness. Radical Acceptance directly dismantles the very foundations of this trance.”
“Public opinion is a weak tyrant compared with our own private opinion.”