Anxious People: The No. 1 New York Times bestseller, now a Netflix TV Series

They say that a person’s personality is the sum of their experiences. But that isn’t true, at least not entirely, because if our past was all that defined us, we’d never be able to put up with ourselves. We need to be allowed to convince ourselves that we’re more than the mistakes we made yesterday. That we are all of our next choices, too, all of

Estelle was thinking about another author now, one who almost a hundred years ago wrote that your children aren’t your children, they’re the sons and daughters of life’s longing for itself.

The truth, of course, is that if people really were as happy as they look on the Internet, they wouldn’t spend so much damn time on the Internet, because no one who’s having a really good day spends half of it taking pictures of themselves. Anyone can nurture a myth about their life if they have enough manure, so if the grass looks greener on the o

Your generation don’t want to study a subject, you just want to study yourselves.’

‘He was my echo. Everything I do is quieter now,’ she said to the other women in the closet.

Over time she realized that deep down almost everyone asks themselves the same sort of questions: Am I good? Do I make anyone proud? Am I useful to society? Am I good at my job? Generous and considerate? A decent shag? Does anyone want me to be their friend? Have I been a good parent? Am I a good person? People

The most expensive thing you can buy in the most densely populated places on the planet is distance.’

Sometimes it hurts, it really hurts, for no other reason than the fact that our skin doesn’t feel like it’s ours.

you’re constantly presented with alternatives, you can never make up your mind, Jim thought.