Quotes from Hugh Prather

Being myself includes taking risks with myself, taking risks on new behavior, trying new ways of 'being myself', so that I can see who it is I want to be.

I talk because I feel, and I talk to you because I want you to know how I feel.

Today I acknowledge that I am not in position to judge what mistakes anyone is making or what lessons anyone needs to learn. I don't know how far someone has come or when that person will have a breakthrough, I simply don't know what other people should be doing. But when I think I do know, I clearly am not doing what I should be doing, which is taking responsibility for my own life.

To live for results would be to sentence myself to continuous frustration. My only sure reward is in my actions and not from them.

Today I don't want to live for, I want to live.

We feel understood by people who like us; misunderstood by people who don't -- and those feelings are probably realistic.

It's this simple: If I never try anything, I never learn anything. If I never take a risk, I stay where I am.

Perfectionism is a slow death....If everything were to turn out just as I would want it, just as I would plan, I would never experience anything new. My life would be an endless repetition of stale successes. When I make a mistake I experience something unexpected.

There is a part of me that wants to write, a part that wants to theorize, a part that wants to sculpt, a part that wants to teach... To force myself into a single role, to decide to be just on thing in life, would kill off large parts of me.

If the desire to write is not accompanied by actual writing, then the desire must be not to write.

Next time I will ..." "From now on I will ..." - What makes me think I am wiser today than I will be tomorrow?

What I want are words that reflect my heart, not my cleverness.

Being myself includes taking risks with myself, taking risks on new behaviour, trying new ways of 'being myself', so that I can see who it is I want to be.

It's not that "today is the first day of the rest of my life," but that now is all there is of my life.

You say you just want to be my friend. I know that you mean you want to relate to my mind but not my body. I can understand that and will not ask you to relate to me in a way that you don't want to, or talk to me about subjects you find uncomfortable. But likewise I refuse to castrate myself for you by pretending not to have the feelings I have. If you want me as your friend you will have to accept my penis along with me.

There are no absolutes for something so relative as a human life. There are no rules for something so gentle as a heart.

I sometimes react to making a mistake as if I have betrayed myself. My fear of making a mistake seems to be based on the hidden assumption that I am potentially perfect and that if I can just be very careful I will not fall from heaven. But a 'mistake' is a declaration of the way I am, a jolt to the way I intend, a reminder I am not dealing with the facts. When I have listened to my mistakes I have grown

We are the only authority on what is good for us. Once we see this, we feel an enormous peace and freedom.

Love does not exclude; it embraces. If we don't love someone outside ourselves, then very simply, we do not love ourselves.

'Fault' means failure to meet a standard. Whose? Mine.

Because the results are unpredictable, no effort of mine is doomed to failure.

If your reaction to your partner's fear-or any other form of distress- is disdain or irritation, you do not want oneness or even friendship with your partner at that moment.

Fears, indecision, and frustration feed on words. Without words they usually stop. . . . Words are at times good for looking back, but they are confining when I need to act in the present.

Letting go is freedom. When you find yourself in a useless battle, you merely walk off the battlefield.